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ADDRESSES 


AT  THE 


INAUGURATION   OF 


PROFESSOR  NOAH  PORTER,  D.D.  LL.D., 


AS 


PRESIDENT   OF  YALE   COLLEGE, 


Wednesday,  October  ii,  1871. 


NEW    YORK: 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER   AND   COMPANY. 

1871. 


RIVERSIDE,   CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED    AND    PRINTED    BY 

H.   O.   HOUGHTON   AND  COMPANY. 


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INTRODUCTION. 


A    T  a  meeting  of  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Yale  College  in 

Jr\    New  Haven,   July    n,    187 1,  Rev.    Noah    Porter,    D.D., 

LL.D.,  Clark  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  and  Metaphysics,  was 

2>     elected  to  the  office  of  President  of  the  College,  made  vacant  by 

^£     the  resignation  of  President  Woolsey. 

Wednesday,  October  11,  was  set  apart  for  the  Inauguration.  A 
severe  storm  of  rain  deterred  many  persons  from  attending,  but  not- 
withstanding this  the  number  of  citizens  and  strangers,  graduates 
and  students,  who  were  present  filled  the  church  to  overflowing. 

The  students  of  the  various  departments  met  in  their  respective 
halls,  and  proceeded  under  the  direction  of  their  instructors  to  the 
front  of  the  College  buildings.  The  invited  guests,  including  offi- 
cers of  other  colleges,  the  present  and  former  public  authorities  of 
the  State  and  the  City,  the  members  of  the  clerical,  legal,  and  med- 
ical profession  of  the  vicinity,  and  the  benefactors  of  the  institution, 
assembled  in  the  College  Library,  where  they  were  joined  by  the 
President,  the  President  elect,  and  the  other  members  of  the  Cor- 
poration. 

At  eleven  o'clock,  the  procession  moved  under  the  direction  of 
Mr.  Edward  Heaton,  and  assistant  marshals  selected  from  among 
the  students,  to  the  Center  Church,  going  by  Chapel  Street  and 
Temple  Street  in  the  following  order :  — 

Music. 

Students  of  the  University,  by  Departments. 

The  Sheriff  of  the  County. 

The  President  and  President  Elect. 

The  Corporation. 

Officers  of  this  and  other  Colleges. 

The  Civil  Authorities. 

Guests  personally  invited. 

Graduates,  in  order  of  seniority. 

577972 


4  INTR  OD  UCTION. 

When  the  right  of  the  procession  reached  the  church,  the  left  was 
still  on  the  College  grounds.  It  was  estimated  that  about  noo  per- 
sons were  in  the  line. 

The  galleries  of  the  church  were  filled  with  ladies.  The  lower 
part  of  the  house  was  reserved  for  the  procession.  The  stage  was 
occupied  by  officers  of  this  and  other  colleges. 

President  Woolsey  presided  until  the  delivery  of  his  address, 
when  he  formally  resigned  the  office,  and  gave  up  to  his  successor 
the  presidential  chair,  having  already  handed  him  the  Charter  and 
Seal  of  the  College. 

The  exercises  in  the  church  were  in  accordance  with  the  following 
programme.  The  music  was  given  by  an  academic  choir  under  the 
direction  of  Dr.  Stoeckel. 

PROGRAMME. 

I.     Chorus  :  "  Gloria  in  Excelsis  Deo." 

II.    Prayer  by  Rev.  Dr.  Bacon. 

III.    The  Induction  of  the  President-Elect, 

WITH   ADDRESS   BY   REV.   PRESIDENT   WOOLSEY. 

IV.    Congratulatory  Address  in  Latin, 

BY  PROFESSOR  THOMAS   A.   THACHER. 

V.    Congratulatory  Address  in  English, 

BY   HENRY   MARTIN    SANDERS, 
Of  the  Senior  Class  in  the  Academical  Department. 

VI.     Chorus  :  "  Domine,  salvum  fac  Praesidem  Nostrum." 
VII.     Inaugural  Address  by  President  Porter. 

VIII.  Doxology. 

IX.  Benediction. 

At  the  close  of  these  exercises,  about  two  o'clock,  the  officers  and 
graduates  of  the  College,  with  their  invited  guests,  repaired  to  the 
library,  and  thence  to  the  Graduates'  Hall,  where  a  lunch  had  been 
provided. 

The  Dining  Hall  had  been  appropriately  decorated  in  honor  of 
the  day.  Over  a  dais,  opposite  the  entrance,  were  hung  the  portraits 
of  the  four  predecessors  of  Dr.  Porter  :  Stiles,  Dwight,  Day,  and 
Woolsey,  surrounding  that  of  the  President  himself.     Upon  the 


INTRODUCTION.  5 

platform  sat  the  oldest  living  graduate  of  the  College,  Mr.  Timothy 
Bishop,  of  New  Haven,  of  the  Class  of  1796,  who  had  been  for  three 
years  a  student  under  President  Stiles,  graduated  under  Dr. 
Dwight,  and  had  been  the  neighbor  and  friend  of  their  three  suc- 
cessors. 

In  other  parts  of  the  hall  were  hung  a  selection  of  the  portraits 
belonging  to  the  College,  together  with  a  few  which  had  been  loaned 
for  this  occasion.  Among  the  number,  were  the  portraits  of  John 
Davenport,  the  Oxford  graduate  and  first  minister  of  New  Haven, 
James  Pierpont,  one  of  the  founders  in  1700,  Gurdon  Salston- 
stall,  Governor  of  Connecticut  in  17 17,  Elihu  Yale,  from  whom 
the  Yalensian  name  proceeds,  Bishop  Berkeley,  the  liberal  Prelate, 
one  of  the  earliest  of  the  long  line  of  benefactors,  Joseph  E.  Shef- 
field, and  Augustus  R.  Street,  founders  of  new  departments  of 
the  College,  George  Peabody,  Henry  Farnam,  Joseph  Battell, 
Philip  Marett,  Sheldon  Clark,  founder  of  the  Chair  of  Meta- 
physics, Jonathan  Edwards,  Joseph  Buckminster,  Eli  Whitney, 
James  Hillhouse,  and  other  well-known  graduates. 

After  an  hour  of  social  intercourse,  President  Porter  called  upon 
the  assembly  to  be  seated,  and  invited  Professor  Dwight  to  the 
chair. 

The  following  song,  written  for  the  occasion,  was  then  sung  by  a 
college  quartette,  the  audience  joining  in  the  chorus. 


SONG. 
"YALE,  BROTHERS,   YALE." 

BY  F.    M.   FINCH,   ESQ.,   OF  ITHACA,   N.   Y.    (CLASS  OF   1849.) 

Air —  "  Canadian  Boat  Song." 

One  comes  ;  —  one  goes.     All  hail !  —  Adieu  ! 

If  darkens  the  evening,  the  morn  shines  new. 

Soon  as  one  star  glides  down  the  night 

Upriseth  another  with  lamp  as  bright. 

Chorus  —  Yale  !  brothers,  Yale  !  —  rose-red  or  pale, 

The  Light  never  fades  from  the  skies  of  Yale  ! 

One  comes  !  —  As  comes  the  August  morn 
That  ripens  and  flosses  the  waiting  corn, 


6  INTR  OD  UCTION. 

So  may  his  summer  of  heart  and  brain 

Fast  ripen  the  seed  into  golden  grain  ! 

Chorus  —  Yale  !  brothers,  Yale  !  —  rose-red  or  pale, 

The  Light  never  fades  from  the  skies  of  Yale  ! 

One  goes  !  —  God  bless  him  !  —  Toil  and  Time 
He  gave  through  the  years  with  a  faith  sublime : 
He  takes  from  these  familiar  realms 
More  thanks  than  the  leaves  of  the  sorrowing  elms. 
Chorus  —  Yale  !  brothers,  Yale  !  —  rose-red  or  pale, 

The  Light  never  fades  from  the  skies  of  Yale  ! 

Who  comes,  —  who  goes,  —  in  sun,  —  in  shade,  — 

On  guard  in  her  resolute  lines  arrayed,  — 

Let  all  be  armed  when  Battle  booms, 

And  garland  our  Mother  with  Victor-blooms. 

Chorus  —  Yale  !  brothers,  Yale  !  —  in  calm  or  gale, 

Thy  banner  be  over  us,  — dear  old  Yale  ! 

Short  speeches  were  then  made  by  Professor  Dwight,  President 
Woolsey,  and  President  Porter,  who  referred  to  several  new  dona- 
tions to  the  College  (including  a  building  for  the  Scientific  School, 
from  Mr.  Joseph  E.  Sheffield).  He  also  mentioned  that  the  Corpo- 
ration had  appointed  a  committee  of  nine,  including  three  of  their 
own  number,  and  six  other  graduates,  to  mature  the  arrangements  by 
which  the  graduates  of  the  College  are  henceforward  to  elect  a  part 
of  the  members  of  the  Corporation.  The  guests  of  the  College  were 
then  called  upon.  In  the  absence  of  Governor  Jewell  (who  had 
been  unavoidably  detained  by  an  engagement  in  a  distant  part  of 
the  country),  the  State  of  Connecticut  was  represented  by  Hon. 
W.  A.  Buckingham,  United  States  Senator.  Rev.  Dr.  McCosh, 
President  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey,  responded  in  behalf  of  other 
colleges.  Mr.  Mori,  the  Minister  of  the  Japanese  government,  resi- 
dent in  Washington,  paid  a  grateful  tribute  to  the  good  will  of  the 
Americans,  and  expressed  his  pleasure  in  meeting  the  author  of  a 
work  on  International  Law  which  is  widely  known  among  the  gov- 
ernment officers  in  Japan.  The  Committee  of  the  Woolsey  Fund, 
through  the  chairman  of  the  Executive  Committee,  Hon.  M.  B. 
Field,  of  the  Class  of  1841,  then  made  a  statement  of  what  they 
have  done  since  their  appointment.  The  graduates  of  the  College 
were  next  called  out,  and  speeches  were  made  by  William  Walter 
Phelps,  Esq.,  of  New  York,  of  the  Class  of  i860,  and  Rev.  Daniel 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

Butler  of  Boston,  of  the  Class  of  1835,  —both  of  whom,  in  cordial 
terms,  expressed  their  gratification  with  the  prospects  of  Old  Yale 
and  their  readiness  to  contribute  to  her  welfare.  The  lateness  of 
the  hour  prevented  further  speeches,  and  the  festivities  were  closed 
by  singing  the  following  familiar  verses  :  — 

"GATHER  YE  SMILES." 

VERSES  FROM    THE    SONG    WRITTEN    FOR    THE    COMMENCEMENT    OF     185O,    BY 

F.  M.  FINCH. 

Air  —  "  Sparkling  and  Bright" 

Gather  ye  smiles  from  the  ocean  isles, 

Warm  hearts  from  river  and  fountain, 
A  playful  chime  from  the  palm-tree  clime, 

From  the  land  of  rock  and  mountain ; 
And  roll  the  song  in  waves  along, 

For  the  hours  are  bright  before  us, 
And  grand  and  hale  are  the  elms  of  Yale, 

Like  fathers  bending  o'er  us. 

Summon  our  band  from  the  prairie  land, 

From  the  granite  hills  dark  frowning, 
From  the  lakelet  blue,  and  the  black  bayou, 

From  the  snows  our  pine  peaks  crowning; 
And  pour  the  song  in  joy  along, 

For  the  hours  are  bright  before  us, 
And  grand  and  hale  are  the  towers  of  Yale, 

Like  giants  watching  o'er  us. 

Clasp  ye  the  hand  'neath  the  arches  grand, 

That  with  garlands  span  our  greeting, 
With  a  silent  prayer  that  an  hour  as  fair, 

May  smile  on  each  after  meeting; 
And  long  may  the  song,  the  joyous  song, 

Roll  on  in  the  hours  before  us, 
And  grand  and  hale  may  the  elms  of  Yale, 

For  many  a  year  bend  o'er  us. 

In  the  course  of  the  proceedings  reference  was  made  by  the 
Chairman  to  the  appalling  fire  at  Chicago,  and  the  President  was 
requested  to  communicate  to  the  Mayor  of  Chicago,  an  expression 


8  INTRODUCTION. 

of  the  sympathy  of  the  Yale  Graduates  and  an  assurance  of  their 
readiness  to  contribute  for  the  relief  of  the  suffering. 

In  the  evening  the  College  buildings  were  illuminated,  and  the 
students  with  torches,  went  in  procession  to  the  houses  of  President 
Porter  and  President  Woolsey,  serenading  them  with  College 
songs. 


ADDRESS  OF  INDUCTION 


PRESIDENT   WOOLSEY. 


ADDRESS. 


I  AM  happy  that  I  can  give  thanks  to  God  for  his  blessing 
upon  this  College,  and  upon  the  administration  of  its  affairs, 
during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  Never  were  its  pros- 
pects and  hopes  brighter  than  at  this  present  moment.  And 
I  rejoice  that  I  can  commit  the  office,  which  I  now  formally 
resign,  into  the  hands  of  one  who  is  perfectly  well  acquainted 
with  the  affairs  of  the  College,  who  has  been  tested  by  an 
official  connection  with  it  of  twenty-five  years,  who  has  hon- 
ored it  by  his  writings,  who  commands,  as  I  believe,  the  re- 
spect and  confidence  of  all,  —  of  the  public,  the  trustees,  the 
graduates,  and  the  faculties. 

To  you,  Sir,  according  to  a  formality  of  ancient  date,  I  com- 
mit this  charter  and  this  seal ;  a  charter  which  in  its  simplicity 
and  liberality  has  long  provided  an  enlightened  and  efficient 
government  over  the  institution,  and  which,  as  I  hope  and 
believe,  by  the  recent  change  in  one  of  its  provisions,  will 
more  effectually  pledge  the  forty-five  hundred  living  graduates 
to  active  measures  for  its  prosperity  ;  and  a  seal,  which,  has 
been  affixed  with  rare  moderation  to  questionable  degrees,  and 
which,  I  augur,  will  be  the  certificate  of  true  scholarship,  as 
well  as  of  high  scientific  and  literary  reputation,  hereafter. 

In  laying  down  my  office  I  do  not  intend  to  set  forth  or  to 
defend  the  principles  upon  which  I,  together  with  my  col- 
leagues, have  endeavored  to  exercise  the  power  committed  to 
us  by  the  Corporation  in  instructing  and  governing  the  Col- 
lege. I  cannot,  however,  forbear  to  mention  three  points  in 
which  the  faculties  have  been  greatly  favored,  —  so  greatly, 
indeed,  that  if  they  have  been  unsuccessful,  the  fault  must  be 
laid  not  at  the  door  of  the  Corporation,  but  somewhere  else 
One  of  these  is  the  confidence  which  the  Corporation  has  reposed 


12  ADDRESS. 

in  them.  The  Board,  in  whose  hands  the  ultimate  and  highest 
decision  rests,  have  ever  felt  that  their  interference,  without 
the  request  of  the  officers  of  instruction,  in  the  study  and  order 
of  the  institution,  would  be  uncalled  for  and  unwise  ;  that  in- 
dependent, unsolicited  action  on  their  part  would  amount  to  a 
censure  of  the  faculties,  and  would  lead  to  discord  and  confu- 
sion. With  scarcely  an  exception,  no  law  has  been  passed,  no 
officer  appointed,  unless  after  full  consultation  and  exchange 
of  views  between  the  boards  of  control  and  of  instruction. 
And  hence,  if  there  are  defects  in  our  system,  the  faculties 
are,  as  they  ought  to  be,  mainly  responsible  ;  if  an  inefficient 
or  unfaithful  officer  comes  into  a  chair  of  instruction,  the  fac- 
ulties, who  know  him  best,  and  not  the  Corporation,  are  to 
bear  whatever  censure  is  justly  due.  I  hope  that  this  may 
always  continue.  I  would  not  indeed  have  the  Corporation  a 
mere  organ  to  carry  into  effect  the  will  of  their  subordinate 
officers  ;  I  would  have  them  think  and  judge  for  themselves, 
have  their  ears  open  to  all  complaints  against  the  system  of 
teaching  or  of  governing,  and  see  that  the  instructions  are 
faithfully  and  successfully  given  ;  but  to  interfere,  "  nisi  dig- 
nus  vindice  nodus,"  would  be  in  the  highest  degree  unwise  ; 
it  would  be  to  reduce  the  faculties  to  the  condition  of  mere 
agents,  and  to  drive  away  the  best  officers  from  the  institu- 
tion. 

And  growing  out  of  this  wise  liberty  conceded  to  the  offi- 
cers, there  is  another  favorable  point  in  the  position  of  the 
college  officers,  —  that,  while  the  general  tradition  of  what  a 
college  ought  to  be  is  tolerably  fixed,  changes  have  constantly 
taken  place  with  the  enlargement  of  the  corps  of  instructors, 
with  the  raising  of  the  standard  of  scholarship,  and  with  the 
demand  for  a  higher  education  in  the  country.  The  best 
thing  about  the  changes  is  that  they  have  been  made  in  all 
quietness,  without  flourish  of  trumpets,  each  at  its  time,  and 
not  all  at  once,  dictated  by  the  desire  of  scientific  and  literary 
improvement,  and  not  by  that  of  adding  to  the  eclat  of  the 
institution.  Thus,  in  the  academic  department,  the  Senior 
year  is  worth  vastly  more  to  the  student  than  it  was  twenty- 
five  years  ago ;  the  methods  of  instruction  have  been  greatly 


ADDRESS.  1 3 

improved  ;  several  of  the  modern  languages  have  been  intro- 
duced ;  the  system  of  examinations  is  on  a  wholly  new  basis  ; 
the  students  are  classified  according  to  their  attainments  ;  and 
optional  studies  are  allowed  without  at  all  overthrowing  the  old 
curriculum.  So  also  in  the  Scientific  School,  the  requisitions  for 
entrance  have  been  made  more  severe  at  the  risk  of  deterring 
many  candidates,  and  the  means  of  instruction  have  been  in- 
creased by  the  self-denial  and  zeal  of  the  professors,  until  the 
School,  in  its  sphere,  takes  the  highest  rank  in  the  judgment 
of  the  whole  country.  And  to  mention  but  one  other  mark 
of  progress,  the  recent  enlargement  of  the  course  for  graduates 
in  philology  and  science,  brought  about  by  the  professors 
themselves,  is  a  most  hopeful  indication  of  the  future  useful- 
ness and  influence  of  the  university.  So  may  it  ever  be  ;  may 
the  spirit  of  true  science,  ever  ready  to  diffuse  itself,  and  act- 
ing on  a  well  conceived  plan,  be  more  and  m  ore  the  spirit  of 
Yale  College,  emanating  from  the  teaching  faculties  and  en- 
couraged by  the  Corporation. 

There  is  a  third  particular  to  which  I  wish  to  call  attention, 
in  which  we  are,  as  I  think,  greatly  favored  :  it  is  that  the 
President,  by  tradition  and  in  conformity  with  a  right  view 
prevailing  here,  takes  an  active  part  in  the  instruction.  This 
of  course  is  not  peculiar  to  us,  but  the  tendency  in  so  large  a 
seat  of  learning,  is  to  throw  so  many  affairs  into  his  hands 
that  he  can  engage  in  no  other  duty.  If  the  choice  were  be- 
tween a  President  who  did  his  official  business  chiefly  by  a 
secretary,  and  one  who  could  give  no  time  to  teaching  on  ac- 
count of  his  other  occupations,  we  should  not,  I  think,  long 
hesitate,  even  if  we  feared  that  the  occupation  of  his  time  in 
instruction  would  prevent  him  from  doing  some  things  which 
would  be  beneficial  to  the  College.  I  have  always  felt  that 
the  details  of  my  office  were  my  duty  and  my  burden,  but 
the  teaching  of  willing  students  and  the  pursuit  of  some  sci- 
ence with  them,  my  duty  and  my  joy  ;  so  that  if  the  office 
were  to  run  along  in  the  rut  of  details  and  official  acts  and 
consultations  only,  I,  for  one,  would  not  think  it  worth  taking. 
The  President  of  a  college  ought  in  some  department  of  study 
to  impress  himself  on  his  students  as  a  man  of  learning  and 


1 4  ADDRESS. 

of  thought ;  he  ought  to  be  near  to  them  in  the  influences 
of  the  lecture-room,  and  to  be  one  of  themselves  ;  his  charac- 
ter ought  to  be  so  within  the  reach  of  their  eyes  that  they  can 
confide  in  him  and  respect  him,  if  he  is  worthy  of  having  such 
sentiments  entertained  towards  him.  Instead  of  which  a  mere 
manager  of  affairs  has  no  appreciable  influence  on  thought 
or  character  ;  and  it  would  be  well  if,  feeling  the  inferiority  of 
his  position,  he  does  not  make  himself  of  importance  in  ques- 
tionable ways  of  interference. 

I  trust,  then,  that  amid  all  the  changes  which  will  come, 
these  advantages,  for  such  they  seem  to  me  to  be,  will  be  re- 
tained in  the  institution. 

And  there  is  another  thing  which  I  hope  will  always  be 
present  here,  with  the  consideration  of  which  I  will  close  this 
brief  address.  I  hope  that,  as  long  as  the  College  lasts,  it  will 
be  the  abode  of  religion,  of  teachers  who  believe  in  Christ  and 
lead  a  religious  life,  and  of  scholars  who  feel  that  a  noble  char- 
acter is  something  infinitely  more  precious  than  learning. 

If  indeed  it  were  necessary  for  the  promotion  of  religion  in 
colleges  that  their  spirit  should  be  sectarian,  or  even  that  of  a 
denomination,  above  all,  if  it  should  be  proselyting,  I  should 
say  that  a  great  difficulty  lay  in  the  way  of  a  truly  good  educa- 
tion ;  and  the  question  then  would  be  :  Ought  colleges  as  they 
are  now  conceived  of,  to  exist  at  all  ?  For  we  take  into  our 
hands  many  young  minds  at  an  age  and  a  point  of  culture  and 
discipline  when  they  are  not  able  to  be  independent  guides  for 
themselves.  If  they  came  to  the  halls  of  science,  already 
mature  and  prepared  to  begin  their  life-study,  established  in 
whatever  it  concerned  them  to  know,  except  that  one  science 
or  profession  which  was  to  be  the  lasting  occupation  of  their 
powers,  then  there  would  be  some  reason  for  leaving  them 
wholly  to  themselves  in  other  respects,  and  for  not  offering  to 
them  that  amount  of  guidance  which  is  consistent  with  train- 
ing in  manly  thought.  For  they  would  be  abte  to  estimate 
their  responsibilities  ;  they  would  have  the  discipline  and  the 
instruments  for  ascertaining  what  is  true  ;  they  would  feel  the 
weight  of  a  speedy  entrance  into  the  great  world  of  men.  But 
as  things  are,  in  the  immaturity  of  the  reason  of  the  actual 


ADDRESS.  15 

student,  we  are  called  to  teach  all  science  almost  from  its 
foundations,  and  among  them  the  sciences  of  metaphysics  and 
morals  ;  why  teach  these  and  stop  at  the  steps  of  the  higher 
temple  dedicated  to  God  ?  Is  it  come  to  this  that  the  study 
of  religion  is  to  be  divorced  from  all  education  ;  that,  as  well 
in  the  college  as  in  the  public  school,  nothing  but  what  is  sec- 
ular, nothing  that  reaches  outside  of  this  material  world  shall 
be  taught  ?  But  I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  say  that  this  is  going 
too  far  for  sincere  philanthropists  of  various  shades  of  thought. 
I  am  happy  to  quote  Mr.  Huxley's  opinion,  that  "  some  form 
of  religion  and  morality  is  essential  to  true  education,"  and  his 
acknowledgment  of  what  religious  influence  has  done  in  this 
good  work.1  Doubtless  in  this  age  of  denials  it  is  easier  to 
rub  out  past  beliefs  from  the  minds  of  the  thoughtless  and  the 
worldly  than  to  make  them  fast  and  deep  ;  so  that  in  one  sense 
the  doubter,  even  the  atheist,  has  the  advantage,  after  all  the 
moral  and  religious  training  through  which  the  young  have 
passed.  But  most  men  who  reject  Christianity  would  emphat- 
ically say,  "  let  us  have  all  the  influences  from  religion  in  favor 
of  a  life  of  truth,  purity,  honor,  and  benevolence,  which  it  can 
exert,  and  as  it  cannot  be  taught  without  being  believed,  let 
college  men  be  sincere  Christian  believers  and  livers,  until  the 
world,  if  it  ever  will,  gives  up  Christ  and  the  Gospel.  Until 
then,"  —  they  will  add,  —  "  let  all  the  moral  forces  at  its  com- 
mand be  bent  on  the  establishment  of  a  higher  morality  than 
this  country  in  its  politics,  or  its  commerce,  or  even  in  its  so- 
cial life  now  presents,"  for  the  welfare,  the  existence,  the  hope 
of  the  land  depend  on  a  higher  tone  of  life,  on  impressing  the 
young  with  a  spirit  like  Christ's,  who  abhorred  evil  and  loved 
right  with  all  the  energy  of  his  nature. 

May  I  not  say,  then,  that  the  question  of  a  religious  educa- 
tion is  answered  for  us  in  the  affirmative  by  the  judgments  of 
those  who  have  no  fixed  belief  in  the  supernatural  origin  of 
religion.  Can  those,  then,  who  do  believe  that  it  is  from 
heaven,  hesitate  about  advancing  farther  still,  or  be  afraid  to 
say  that  not  only  the  benevolent,  purifying  tendencies  of 
Christianity,  but  its  truths  and  authority  also  require  that  they 

1  See  London  Quarterly  Review  for  July,  1871. 


1 6  ADDRESS. 

should,  in  all  fit  ways,  imbue  their  pupils  with  the  common  faith. 
Parents,  that  is,  the  great  majority  of  them,  expect  this,  and 
rather  blame  the  colleges  for  the  neglect  of  a  religious  training 
than  for  going  too  far  in  that  direction.  If  there  were  an  in- 
stitution which  took  the  other  course,  which  said  by  its  meas- 
ures, not  only  that  it  was  entirely  indifferent  to  the  claims  of 
Christianity,  but  admitted  all  advocates  of  all  theories  opposed 
to  it  to  inculcate  their  views  on  the  minds  of  collegians,  such 
an  attitude  could  be  interpreted  only  as  a  covert  form  of  hos- 
tility, nor  could  an  earnest  believer  in  Christianity  be  willing 
to  expose  his  son  to  an  atmosphere,  as  he  regarded  it,  so  stag- 
nant and  pestilential. 

While  thus,  on  the  one  hand,  in  the  education  of  all  who  are 
in  the  earlier  stages  of  culture,  indifference  or  neglect  of  the 
highest,  the  celestial  truth,  really  amounts  to  undervaluing  it, 
or  to  denying  it,  there  is  no  practical  difficulty,  on  the  other 
hand,  arising  from  the  fact  that  colleges  are  to  some  degree 
under  the  control  of  denominations.  Here,  first,  I  may  be 
allowed  to  state  what  I  myself  have  observed,  that  in  a  long 
acquaintance  with  officers  of  colleges  controlled  by  various 
religious  sects,  I  have  discovered  no  spirit  of  proselytism  and 
no  important  disagreements  in  regard  to  the  meaning  and 
essence  of  our  common  Christianity.  They  may  cling,  and 
possibly  with  fondness,  to  their  own  modes  of  church  govern- 
ment, to  the  distinctive  points  of  doctrine  which  come  down 
to  them  from  their  fathers,  but  they  do  not  differ  as  to  the 
realities  of  sin  and  forgiveness,  nor  as  to  the  qualities  essential 
to  a  perfect  life.  In  fact,  the  training  of  educated  Christian 
men  now,  brought  as  they  are  under  the  influences  of  Church 
history,  of  an  improved  exegesis,  and  of  a  growing  sense  of 
the  common  brotherhood  of  Christians,  brings  them  to  nearly 
the  same  views,  —  to  "  the  unity  of  the  faith  and  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  Son  of  God."  For  instance,  when  that  noble  man, 
Dr.  Wayland,  was  alive,  one  who  was  not  a  Baptist  might  have 
been  sure  that  he  would  be  the  guide  of  young  minds  into  a 
pure  and  lofty  Christianity. 

But  some  will  present  another  difficulty,  —  the  attitude 
which  religion  must  take  towards  some  of  the  doctrines  of 


ADDRESS.  1 7 

modern  science,  —  for  science  has  its  dogmas,  some  of  them 
half  proved,  new-fangled,  which  it  is  as  much  the  fashion  to 
admit  on  insufficient  evidence,  as  it  is  for  some  schools  of 
philosophers  to  deny  even  the  possibility  of  revelation.  I  can 
only  say  in  regard  to  such  imagined  difficulties  that,  when  the 
scientific  doctrine  is  not  yet  received  but  is  knocking  for  ad- 
mission at  the  door  of  truth,  it  cannot  have  fixed  relations  to 
established  truth  ;  that  the  sciences  built  on  observation  of 
nature  and  those  built  on  the  primary  convictions  of  man  and 
on  historical  evidence  cannot  be  really  hostile  ;  and  that  the 
Christian  mind  must  be  a  narrow  one  or  a  skeptical  one  which 
stands  in  dread  of  every  new  discovery,  or  every  new  theory, 
proceeding  from  scientific  men.  As  for  the  rest,  we  must  rely 
on  those  devout  men  in  our  scientific  chairs  who  are  ever 
ready  to  avow  their  faith  in  Christ,  to  encounter  those  theories 
of  rash  scientists  which  are  more  to  be  feared  for  the  spirit 
they  show  than  for  the  facts  alleged  in  their  behalf.  I  rejoice 
that  in  this  Christian  college  there  are  many  such  scientific 
men  who  prove  all  things  and  hold  fast  that  which  is  good, 
who  are  alive  to  all  the  new  suggestions  and  teachings  of 
science,  and  yet  stand  firm  in  their  adherence  to  religious 
truth. 

But  a  farther  question  may  be  asked  —  which  is,  —  granting 
that  religion  ought  to  have  its  home  in  colleges,  how  shall  it 
go  forth  in  its  influences  from  the  instructor  to  the  pupil  ? 
What  place  shall  it  occupy  in  the  curriculum  ?  How  far  shall 
it  be  left  to  the  voluntary  endeavor  of  earnest  men  to  do  good 
to  those  whom  they  can  reach  by  any  proper  and  useful  influ- 
ence ?  Shall  it  leaven  all  teachings  only,  or  shall  it  have  its 
distinct  place  among  the  subjects  of  instruction  ?  Questions 
of  moment  surely,  but  which  I  shall  not  attempt  at  this  time 
to  answer.  Nor,  indeed,  is  it  absolutely  necessary  to  provide 
an  answer.  For  as  in  all  instruction,  from  the  humblest  be- 
ginnings in  the  nursery  to  its  completion,  when  the  finished 
and  refined  man  is  pushed  out  into  life  to  instruct  others,  very 
much  must  be  tentative  and  experimental,  so  must  it  be  in 
this  matter  of  religious  teaching.  Nor  is  the  same  method 
equally  within  the  power  of  all.     Teaching  has  its  subjective 


1 8  ADDRESS. 

side,  and  he  who  knows  his  own  measure  well  will  ever  be  fit- 
ting himself,  on  his  own  plans  and  not  on  another's,  to  his 
work  as  an  instructor.  The  spirit  is  the  great  thing.  He 
who  feels  himself  called  to  be  a  teacher,  who  has  the  spirit  of 
service  to  God  and  man  in  this  sphere,  has  the  foundation  on 
which  all  healthy  experiments  may  be  built.  He  by  his  trials, 
—  even  when  they  fail,  —  will  ever  be  qualifying  himself  for 
something  better,  in  the  way  of  imparting  knowledge  and 
establishing  principles,  than  he  has  as  yet  attained  to.  And 
especially  he  will  be  anxious  not  to  leave  untried  all  right 
experiments  to  promote  an  honorable  and  truly  Christian 
character  in  the  institution  where  his  lot  is  cast. 

And  now  I  close  this  my  last  official  act  with  the  prayer  to 
God  that  this  may  ever  be  a  Christian  College  in  the  highest 
and  best  sense.  May  its  graduates  go  forth  to  bless  the  world 
as  men  of  principle,  and  as  they  advance  in  life  may  they  ever 
retain  a  just  and  fond  affection  for  their  Alma  Mater  ;  may  its 
guardians,  under  the  amendments  of  the  charter,  have  that 
unity  and  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  departments  which 
will  be  a  sure  pledge  of  successful  councils.  May  its  faculties 
keep  in  the  van  of  their  sciences,  teach  with  a  loving  spirit, 
and  feel  that  life  is  more  and  higher  than  learning.  May  its 
students  be  manly,  truthful,  honorable,  able  by  their  strength 
of  principle  to  resist  the  debasing  influences  that  are  abroad 
in  the  land,  —  may  they,  in  short,  be  true  Christian  gentle- 
men. 


ADDRESSES    OF    CONGRATULATION; 

IN    LATIN    BY 

PROFESSOR  THOMAS   A.   THACHER,    LL.  D. 

AND    IN    ENGLISH    BY 

HENRY   MARTIN   SANDERS. 


ORATIO. 


AUGURATO  auspicatoque  ut  fiant  solemnia  quae  a  nobis 
hodie  repetuntur,  mihi  primum  praescriptum  est,  ut  La- 
tinis  verbis  tibi  omnium  nomine  collegarum  meorum  saluta- 
tiones  gratulationesque  faciam.  Neque  tibi,  precor,  in  mentem 
veniat  putare,  nos  consuetudinis  causa,  ea  tantummodo  dicere 
quae  postulet  tempus.  Longe  enim  alius  est  nobis  animus. 
Etenim  quae  senatores  illi  academici,  publico  munere  fungen- 
tes,  cunctis  suffragiis  fecerunt,  ea  nunc  palam  probare  volumus, 
et,  quantum  in  nobis  situm  est,  omnino  redintegrare.  Te  qui- 
dem  certe,  qui  per  tot  annos  collega  es  noster  valde  amatus, 
cui  fere  omnia  ad  res  academicas  feliciter  administrandas  per- 
tinentia  diu  bene  nota  fuerunt,  te,  inquam,  a  senatu  academico 
ante  hos  tres  menses  designatum,  nobis  more  solito  praefici 
magnopere  cupivimus.  Atque  nunc  tandem  huic  academiae, 
huic  universitati  dico,  rite  praefectum,  praesidem  nostrum  reve- 
rendum  libentissime  salutamus,  atque  ex  animo  salvere  jube- 
mus. 

Neque  omittamus  gratulari  tibi,  quum  propter  splendorem 
eximium  dignitatis,  quam  Socii,  collegae,  alumni,  juvenes  quos 
adesse  vides,  omnes  tibi  conferri  vehementer  gaudent,  turn 
propter  idoneas  beneficia  in  alios  conferendi  opportunitates, 
turn  etiam  propter  uberrimam  laborum  copiam,  qui  te  manent 
et  forsitan  aliquantulum  terreant. 

Facile  enim  credimus  labores  infinitos  tibi  hodie  ante  oculos 
obversari  et  haud  mediocrem  injicere  metum,  ne  quae  alii  annis 
praeteritis  omnium  commodo  praestiterint,  ea  tibi  difficultates, 
contentiones,  pericula  sint  habitura.  Neque  mirum.  Crescunt 
enim  in  singulos  annos  non  solum  juvenes  qui  hie  doctrina  se 
excolunt,  sed  multo  magis  doctrinae  ipsae  scientiaeque,  et  nume- 
rus  eorum  qui  his  quasi  provinciis  literarum  non  sine  cura  gravi 


22  ORATIO. 

sunt  praeficiendi  et  postea  singulari  prudentia  dirigendi.  Ne- 
gotiis  igitur  maxime  operosis,  sed  tamen  honestissimis  et  viro 
doctissimo  dignis,  semper  necesse  erit  te  praeesse. 

Sed  in  his  molestiis  et  sollicitudinibus  illud  tibi  sit  leva- 
mento,  quod  collegae  tui  omnes  semper  tibi  opem  et  auxilium 
afferre  volent.  Nostrum  erit  profecto  onus  tibi  impositum  qui- 
bus  rebus  poterimus  allevare. 

Quod  quum,  his  omnibus  audientibus,  nos  facturos  esse  ex 
animi  sententia  nunc  promittimus,  precamur  simul,  ut  Deus 
ipse  supremus  tibi  semper  benigne  faveat,  et  per  te  tuosque 
labores  diuturnos  in  academiam  nostram  omnia  bona  conferat. 


ADDRESS. 


MOST  HONORED  SIR  :  The  students  of  Yale  College 
hail  with  joyful  hearts  the  dawning  of  this  day.  It  be- 
speaks to  us  the  continuance  of  an  administration  singularly 
happy,  and,  in  addition,  presages  even  greater  things,  if  possi- 
ble, for  our  much  loved  institution.  To  your  predecessor,  sir, 
we  would  render  the  tribute  of  grateful  hearts.  For  the  extent 
of  his  varied  attainments,  the  weight  of  his  personal  character, 
and  the  influence  of  his  exemplary  life,  we  have  no  terms  ade- 
quate to  express  our  respect. 

But  in  your  accession  to  this  honored  position,  we  feel  that 
the  scepter  has  not  passed  from  the  tribe  of  Judah,  that  our 
Israel  has  not  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  stranger.  With  our 
institution  your  name  has  become  identified,  —  in  that  with  its 
objects  you  have  had  the  deepest  sympathy,  and  with  its  ad- 
vancement you  have  been  most  intimately  associated.  It  has, 
therefore,  in  calling  you  to  its  head,  but  bestowed  the  small 
reward  of  a  life-service  devoted  to  its  cause.  With  the  hearti- 
est appreciation,  then,  of  your  self-sacrifice  in  behalf  of  others, 
as  well  as  with  the  highest  esteem  of  your  preeminent  qualifi- 
cations, we  congratulate  ourselves  upon  your  inauguration.  In 
you  we  recognize  a  Christian  gentleman  ;  in  you  we  find  a 
superior  educator ;  in  you  we  feel  we  have  a  kind  and  sympa- 
thetic friend.  But  we  would  not  indulge  ourselves  in  well- 
merited  but  unnecessary  eulogy,  nor  yet  would  we  have  you 
judge  of  the  sincerity  of  our  salutation  by  the  expression  of  it 
merely,  but  pledge  as  a  far  greater  proof  our  cordial  sympathy 
and  earnest  cooperation.  We  look  with  pride  upon  the  history 
of  our  institution ;  we  contemplate  with  pleasure  its  present 
prosperity  ;  and  we  venture  to  predict,  as  we  have  every  reason 


24  ADDRESS. 

to  expect,  a  career  under  your  administration  at  once  success- 
ful and  illustrious. 

Again,  sir,  we  welcome  you  ;  we  welcome  you  for  the  sake 
of  a  thorough  and  accurate  scholarship  ;  we  welcome  you  as 
the  champion  of  a  broad  and  liberal  culture  ;  we  welcome  you 
in  the  hope  of  our  future  usefulness  ;  we  welcome  you  in  the 
love  of  our  dear,  old,  Alma  Mater,  assured  that  when  the  Great 
Teacher  shall  make  his  awards,  a  fitting  recompense  will  be 
given  to  one  who  has  done  so  much  for  the  elevation  of  his 
fellow-men. 


INAUGURAL    ADDRESS 

BY 

PRESIDENT    PORTER. 


ADDRESS. 


I  NEED  make  no  apology  for  selecting  as  my  theme 
the  Higher  Education  of  the  country.  An  occasion  like 
the  present  would,  under  any  circumstances,  require  me  to 
speak  of  this  subject  in  some  of  its  aspects.  It  cannot  be 
avoided  at  the  present  time,  when  the  entire  theory  of  Higher 
Education  is  so  generally  and  so  actively  discussed.  Never, 
perhaps,  did  this  subject  occupy  the  thoughts  of  so  many  per- 
sons and  occupy  them  so  earnestly.  It  certainly  never  ex- 
cited more  active  controversy,  or  provoked  more  various  or 
confident  criticism,  or  was  subjected  to  a  greater  variety  of 
experiments  than  with  us  in  these  passing  years.  The  re- 
mark is  not  infrequently  made  that  college  and  university 
education  are  not  merely  agitated  by  reforms  ;  they  are  rather 
convulsed  by  a  revolution,  —  so  unsettled  are  the  minds  of 
many  who  control  public  opinion,  so  sharp  is  the  criticism  of 
real  or  imagined  defects  in  the  old  methods  and  studies,  and 
so  determined  is  the  demand  for  sweeping  and  fundamental 
changes. 

This  excitement  and  agitation  are  full  of  encouragement  to 
the  friends  of  solid  learning  and  genuine  culture.  They  show 
beyond  question  that  the  institutions  for  higher  education  are 
a  great  power  in  this  country  and  are  in  no  sense  losing  their 
hold  on  public  attention  ;  else  they  would  not  be  discussed 
with  such  earnestness,  nor  would  the  discussions  awaken  so 
wide-spread  an  interest.  The  jealous  interest  on  the  part  of 
every  graduate  that  his  own  college  should  not  be  behind  the 
foremost,  indicates  that  the  point  concerning  which  all  are  so 
sensitive  is  of  no  slight  importance.  Were  the  colleges  and 
universities  dying  out,  or  were  their  influence  becoming  rela- 
tively less  considerable,  they  would  not  engross  so  much  of 


28  ADDRESS. 

the  public  attention  ;  were  the  higher  education  esteemed  of 
less  value,  it  could  not  awaken  so  warm  and  passionate  an  in- 
terest. From  this  excitement  we  augur  the  best  results.  We 
have  no  fear  of  popular  agitation  of  these  questions.  It  is 
true  we  are  in  some  respects  a  rash  and  hasty  people,  not 
steadied,  apparently,  by  over-much  reverence  for  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  past,  and  at  times  imposed  on  by  specious  argu- 
ments and  fair  promises.  We  are  open,  even  in  education,  to 
the  arts  of  the  demagogue  and  the  charlatan.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  are  quick  to  suspect  quackery  and  keen  in  judging 
of  results.  The  best  system,  if  fairly  tested  by  its  advocates 
and  loyally  trusted  by  its  friends,  is  sure  to  vindicate  itself  by 
its  fruits ;  and  these  fruits  are  sooner  matured  and  more 
clearly  made  manifest  in  this  than  in  any  other  country.  We 
are  indeed  mercurially  susceptible  to  ideas  both  true  and  false ; 
but  for  this  very  reason  the  true  have  an  advantage  over  the 
false,  —  if  the  two  are  fairly  and  bravely  represented.  The 
breeze  of  public  interest  and  public  criticism,  which  is  now 
blowing  so  freshly  through  the  halls  of  ancient  learning,  can 
only  bring  health  and  vigor.  It  may  sweep  away  somewhat 
of  the  dust  of  routine  and  the  cobwebs  of  tradition.  It  may 
waken  instructors  to  quickened  energies,  to  wider  and  warmer 
sympathies,  to  a  more  productive  invention  and  an  intenser 
enthusiasm.  It  may  sober  and  elevate  their  pupils  to  a  man- 
lier and  livelier  sense  of  their  responsibilities  to  the  com- 
monwealth of  man  ;  while  it  deepens  their  convictions  of 
the  value  of  painful  tasks  and  enforced  duties,  of  thorough 
workmanship  and  generous  culture.  It  were  a  craven  spirit 
in  the  intelligent  believer  in  liberal  education  that  should  falter 
in  its  allegiance  to  well-grounded  convictions  because  these 
are  sharply  assailed.  It  were  traitorous  to  abandon  positions, 
the  defense  of  which  may  be  of  untold  consequence  to  future 
generations,  because  of  the  confident  assertions  or  the  plausi- 
ble arguments  of  the  innovator  and  the  sciolist.  Whatever  is 
good  in  the  old  systems,  will  not  only  endure  the  scrutiny  of 
argument  and  bide  the  test  of  experiment,  but,  as  we  believe, 
will  justify  itself  to  the  best  judgment  of  the  men  who  form 
public  opinion.    As  we  have  faith  in  the  future  of  this  country 


ADDRESS.  29 

we  confidently  expect  that  its  higher  education  will  be  shaped 
by  the  sound  sense  and  the  considerate  wisdom  of  those  who 
are  competent  to  decide  questions  of  this  kind. 

In  entering  upon  the  discussion  of  our  theme,  we  observe, 
First:  the  Higher  Education  should  be  conversant  with  the 
Past.  This  is  one  of  its  special  distinctions  and  imperative 
obligations.  It  does  not  describe  its  sole  or  its  whole  duty, 
but  a  class  of  duties  which  are  prominent  and  character- 
istic. It  is  sometimes  made  a  ground  of  reproach  against  this 
education  and  the  men  devoted  to  it,  that  they  are  so  greatly 
occupied  with  the  past ;  as  if  the  one  function  to  which  above 
all  others  they  are  set  apart  were  not  to  master  its  gathered 
acquisitions  and  its  instructive  wisdom.  An  education  which 
despises  the  past  is  necessarily  limited  and  narrow.  It  is 
judged  and  condemned  already  by  the  ignorance  and  effront- 
ery of  its  pretensions.  Institutions  and  teachers  of  culture 
that  profess  to  concern  themselves  little  with  what  has  been 
thought  and  done  in  other  generations  are  convicted  of  incom- 
petency by  their  own  announcements. 

The  Past  with  which  this  education  should  concern  itself 
includes,  first  of  all,  those  positive  and  permanent  acquisitions 
which  man  has  produced  in  previous  generations  and  trans- 
mitted to  the  present,  —  i.  e.y  whatever  man  has  learned  to  be 
true  of  the  universe  of  matter  and  of  spirit,  and  whatever  he 
has  invented  or  created  in  appliances  for  his  comfort,  in  ma- 
chinery for  his  labors  and  locomotion,  and  in  products  of  art 
for  his  wonder  and  delight.  To  this  we  should  add  as  no  less 
important  all  those  principles,  traditional  and  recorded,  con- 
cerning man's  duty  and  destiny,  embracing  ethics  and  theol- 
ogy ;  concerning  his  political  and  social  relations,  constitut- 
ing legal  and  political  science  ;  concerning  the  courtesies  and, 
amenities  of  life,  comprehending  what  we  call  civilization. 
Here  belong  those  works  of  literature  which  the  world  has  not 
been  willing  to  let  die.  All  these  are  the  products  of  the  past, 
its  gathered  accumulations  which,  whatever  be  their  nature 
and  however  they  are  preserved  and  transmitted,  nothing  but 
barbarism  or  anarchy  could  forget  or  destroy.     To  preserve 


30  ADDRESS. 

some  of  these  products  the  lower  and  more  diffused  culture  is 
sufficient.  Others  can  be  preserved  and  transmitted  only  by 
selected  guardians,  —  who  receive  them  into  careful  hands, 
teach  others  to  understand  and  value  and  improve  them,  and 
thus  transmit  them  with  added  wealth  and  beauty  to  the  gen- 
eration that  follows. 

But  besides  these  products  of  the  activities  of  the  Past  there 
are  also  the  records  of  these  activities  themselves.  It  is  with 
these  preeminently  that  the  higher  education  should  concern 
itself.  Foremost  we  name  history  proper,  as  it  opens  for  us 
its  pictured  and  admonitory  pages  —  the  history  of  deeds  and 
of  men,  with  the  events  that  stir  the  imagination,  and  inspire  to 
imitation,  with  its  inciting  and  warning  examples  of  character, 
and  the  incidents  that  illustrate  and  enforce  those  truths  which 
men  are  continually  disposed  to  forget.  Next  the  history  of 
thought  and  speculation  —  so  sadly  and  so  often  the  history  of 
confusion  and  of  error  —  the  history  of  philosophy  of  every  sort, 
physical,  political,  ethical,  theological,  and  metaphysical.  Con- 
nected with  this,  and  most  important,  is  the  history  of  speech, 
or  the  study  of  language,  which  in  its  structure  and  changes  is 
of  itself  so  instructive  a  reflex  of  human  thought  and  emotion 
and  so  important  a  record  of  human  civilization.  This  study 
of  what  man  has  been  and  attempted  in  the  past  is  fully  as  im- 
portant for  education  as  is  the  mastery  of  what  man  has  learned 
and  proved.  To  assert  as  many  do,  and  to  imply  as  more  would 
hastily  infer,  that  the  past  can  teach  us  nothing,  except  the  pos- 
itive truths  and  products  which  survive  it,  is  to  overlook  the 
most  important  functions  of  education  and  of  knowledge  —  its 
offices  in  stimulating  thought  and  awakening  activity,  its  ca- 
pacity to  enlarge  the  mind  by  comparative  judgments  and  to 
enrich  it  with  permanent  principles. 

Without  arguing  the  point  that  the  best  and  highest  educa- 
tion comes  from  an  acquaintance  with  the  past,  we  contend 
that  the  institutions  of  higher  education  should  be  seats  of 
learning,  in  the  special  sense  of  the  phrase.  They  must  be 
such  in  order  that  the  education  may  be  the  highest  and  best. 
It  is  obvious  that  what  a  man  teaches  he  must  first  have 
learned,  and  it  is  equally  clear  that  the  more  he  knows  and 


ADDRESS.  31 

the  more  he  has  thought,  other  things  being  equal,  the  better 
fitted  he  is  to  instruct  others.  As  long  as  the  teachers  of  the 
higher  seminaries  are  only  a  step  in  advance  of  any  of  their 
pupils,  they  can  neither  inspire  confidence  nor  teach  with 
authority.  The  successful  teacher  also  inspires  to  culture  by 
being  himself  an  eminent  example  of  wide  and  varied  knowl- 
edge, and  by  showing  that  his  resources  of  reading  and 
thought  are  adequate  to  every  exigency.  The  mellowing  and 
refining  results  of  converse  with  the  past  must  be  seen  in  his 
wise  thoughtfulness,  his  exact  knowledge,  his  cautious  posi- 
tiveness,  and  his  candid  spirit.  While  we  concede  that  our 
universities  and  colleges  are  not  primarily  designed  to  be 
academies  for  learned  acquisition  and  research,  yet  they  must 
be  made  such  in  fact,  in  order  that  they  may  be  schools  of  the 
highest  culture.  To  the  highest  efficiency  of  their  instructors, 
sufficient  leisure  is  required  from  the  duties  of  teaching  to 
enable  them  to  make  constant  acquisitions,  and  an  income 
that  will  give  them  no  excuse  for  withdrawing  their  energies 
from  the  twofold  activity  of  acquiring  and  imparting.  While 
we  do  not  desire  that  the  professorships  in  our  colleges  and 
universities  should  be  chairs  of  learned  leisure,  we  insist  that 
high  education  cannot  be  attained  unless  our  seminaries  of 
instruction  and  culture  shall  also  be  seats  of  eminent  and 
wakeful  learning. 

That  our  colleges  should  be  seats  of  learning  is  also  as  essential 
for  the  general  culture  of  the  country  as  it  is  for  the  special  ends 
of  education.  The  attention  of  not  a  few  thoughtful  men  among 
us  has  been  directed  to  the  danger  that  in  the  rush  after 
material  wealth,  the  madness  for  political  supremacy,  and  the 
glare  of  superficial  accomplishments,  the  higher  learning  and 
more  consummate  culture  should  either  fail  to  be  attained,  or 
fail  to  be  honored  among  us,  or  that  these  should  be  so  far 
the  exclusive  possessions  of  the  few  as  to  have  little  practical 
influence  over  the  men  who  control  our  affairs,  —  as  the  edi- 
tors, the  men  of  the  professions,  the  leading  merchants,  and 
manufacturers, —  and  even  over  the  educators  of  the  country. 
Indeed,  it  has  become  a  doctrine  with  not  a  few  that  there  is  a 
natural  antagonism  between  culture  and  practical  success,  that 


32  ADDRESS. 

exact  learning  and  refined  tastes  are  incompatible  with  emi- 
nence in  the  conduct  of  affairs.  The  doctrine  has  been  con- 
verted into  the  heresy,  that  in  a  republic  which  in  theory  is 
controlled  by  principles  and  insight,  special  reliance  on  either 
is  a  disqualification  for  public  trusts.  More  marvelous  still  in 
a  community  which  rests  on  popular  education,  the  doctrine  is 
studiously  propagated  that  the  higher  learning  is  antagonistic 
to  the  lower. 

We  have  no  time  to  show  that  no  ignorance  can  be  more 
stupid  and  no  heresy  more  malignant  and  destructive.  The 
lessons  of  history  —  both  the  earlier  and  the  more  recent  — 
are  distinct  and  vivid  that  in  a  republic  like  ours,  wealthy, 
proud,  and  self-confident,  there  can  be  neither  permanence 
nor  dignity  if  the  best  knowledge  and  the  highest  culture  of 
the  world  do  not  influence  its  population  and  its  institutions. 
It  becomes  a  serious  question,  then,  how  the  learning  and 
culture  of  the  country  can  be  more  successfully  provided  for 
and  made  generally  accessible.  Something  may  be  done  by 
organizing  learned  societies  for  historical,  geographical,  politi- 
cal, and  sociological  research,  by  special  and  public  libraries, 
by  institutes  for  learned  lectures,  by  museums  of  archaeology, 
natural  history,  and  art,  by  laboratories  and  observatories,  and 
by  detached  schools  of  technology  and  physics.  Many  such 
institutions  and  societies  have  already  been  founded.  Not  a 
few  have  been  largely  endowed  at  the  suggestion  of  individual 
caprice  or  local  pride.  They  are  all  admirable  in  their  way 
and  useful  in  their  sphere,  but  they  neither  supersede  nor  in 
any  considerable  degree  supplement  the  universities  and  col- 
leges. They  rather  lean  upon  these  for  support,  and  refer  to 
them  as  authorities.  They  must  be  devoted  chiefly  to  the 
accumulation  of  appliances  for  the  special  or  the  occasional 
student,  rather  than  to  the  organized  and  persistent  pursuit  of 
science  and  learning.  If  now  and  then  an  ample  foundation, 
abundant  leisure,  and  a  well-appointed  establishment  invite  to 
special  researches,  there  is  wanting  the  sense  of  responsibility 
and  of  social  excitement  which  are  essential  to  the  highest 
success.  Learning  and  culture  rarely  thrive  so  well  as  when 
prosecuted  by  a  society  of  men  who  can  stimulate  and  aid 


ADDRESS.  33 

one  another  by  their  diverse  aptitudes  and  tastes  and  acquisi- 
tions. 

Assuming  that  our  colleges  are  preeminently  fitted  to  be  the 
seats  of  learning  in  such  a  country  as  ours,  the  question  is  most 
important  what  more  can  be  done  to  make  them  more  eminent 
and  influential  in  this  regard.  It  is  safe  to  say  in  reply  that 
it  is  not  desirable  to  attach  to  them  chairs  or  foundations  de- 
voted exclusively  to  research  with  no  obligations  to  instruc- 
tion. The  experience  of  the  English  universities  has  shown 
that  life  endowments  with  limited  or  uncertain  duties  of  in- 
struction, have  not  accomplished  so  much  for  the  higher  learn- 
ing of  the  country  as  they  would  have  done  had  the  incumbents 
been  held  to  constant  and  active  service  in  teaching.  The  duty 
of  communicating  need  not  interfere  with  activity  in  learning. 
It  rather  imparts  a  present  and  pressing  interest  to  research. 
It  gives  clearness  and  method  and  fixedness  to  what  is  learned. 
Even  if  the  line  of  study  is  higher  than  the  line  of  instruction, 
the  habits  which  are  inspired  in  the  class-room  are  favorable 
to  solid  and  sober  acquisition.  To  communicate  with  the  liv- 
ing voice  and  in  the  presence  of  those  waiting  to  learn,  awak- 
ens a  life  and  interest  in  the  teacher  which  the  preparation  of 
the  written  essay  or  learned  paper  can  never  inspire.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  duties  of  teaching  need  not  interfere  with  the 
time  and  interest  which  study  requires.  How  can  the  demands 
of  the  two  be  adjusted  ?  Let  the  college  be  so  well  endowed 
as  to  allow  its  younger  teachers  sufficient  time  for  study  while 
it  imposes  on  them  special  duties  of  discipline  and  instruction. 
As  age  advances,  and  the  attainments  are  more  conspicuous, 
let  the  duties  of  instruction  be  lightened.  If  graduate  classes 
are  formed  and  university  work  is  undertaken,  let  this  work  b 
assigned  to  the  older  and  /  lore  eminent.  Let  special  and  ad- 
vanced students  never  be'  set  aside  by  the  pre-occupations  of 
elementary  teaching,  —  bat  let  the  accomplished  professor 
never  cease  to  instruct  so  long  as  health  and  life  permit. 
The  example  is  not  infrequent  in  the  German  universities  of 
veterans  in  Philology  like  Bockh,  in  History  like  Ranke,  in 
Physics  like  Karl  Ritter,  in  Theology  like  Nitszch  and  Twes- 
ten,  in  Philosophy  like  Brandis,  in  Law  like  Mittermaier,  ap- 
3 

% 


34  ADDRESS. 

pearing  in  the  lecture-room  and  going  from  the  lecture-room 
to  the  study  to  prosecute  the  researches  which  have  made 
them  authorities  in  the  world  of  learning  and  lights  to  man- 
kind. These  examples,  and  the  successful  working  of  the  Ger- 
man theory,  teach  a  twofold  lesson  :  that  the  university  is  the 
fittest  place  for  undergraduates  to  further  the  higher  learning 
of  the  country,  and  that  in  the  university  the  man  of  research 
should  continue  to  be  active  as  an  instructor.  The  plan  which 
has  been  developed  in  Yale  College  of  attaching  university 
schools  or  classes  to  the  undergraduate  curriculum,  and  of 
encouraging  college  professors  to  enter  upon  higher  teaching, 
is  eminently  fitted  to  make  them  learned  men,  and  at  the  same 
time  efficient  and  successful  instructors.  It  will  also  contribute 
to  the  learning  and  culture  of  the  country  by  arousing  the  de- 
sire for  research  and  culture  among  the  students. 

This  suggests  the  thought  that  there  is  no  way  which 
promises  better  for  the  cause  of  learning  than  the  endowment 
of  terminable  scholarships  and  fellowships  as  prizes  for  special 
attainments,  and  as  incitements  to  future  study.  The  truth 
must  be  repeated  often  enough  to  attract  attention  and  to 
compel  a  hearing,  that  the  most  important  reason  why  higher 
attainments  in  learning  and  culture  are  not  reached,  or  are 
reached  by  so  few,  is  that  the  incitements  are  so  scanty  and  so 
uncertain,  especially  at  the  time  of  life  when  a  career  of  special 
study  can  be  entered  upon  with  the  greatest  advantage.  The 
graduate  from  the  college  or  university  whose  ardor  for  knowl- 
edge is  just  beginning  to  glow,  and  whose  capacity  for  inde- 
pendent acquisition  is  newly  developed,  often  desires  nothing 
so  earnestly  as  to  prosecute  special  studies  for  his  personal  im- 
provement, or  in  view  of  the  possible  contingency  of  an  aca- 
demic life.  From  the  gratification  of  this  desire  he  is  usually 
turned  aside  by  the  want  of  money  or  the  pressing  claims  of  pro- 
fessional study.  A  scholarship  with  its  promise  of  support  and 
its  place  of  honor,  or  with  its  openings  to  an  attractive  future, 
would  tempt  such  a  person  to  prosecute  special  studies  at  his 
college,  rendering  some  service  as  an  instructor  or  examiner. 
The  termination  of  the  provision  at  the  end  of  three  or  five 


ADDRESS.  35 

years  would  prevent  abuse  or  indolence,  especially  if  the  pros- 
ecution of  definite  studies,  under  the  direction  of  the  college, 
were  added  as  a  condition.  The  advantages  of  such  founda- 
tions are  many,  advantages  which  would  be  cheaply  purchased 
at  an  immensely  heightened  cost  above  any  which  can  pos- 
sibly be  required  for  the  amplest  endowments.  Our  learned 
class  would  be  reinforced  by  men  in  the  ardor  of  youth,  with 
the  fresh  energy  of  newly  awakened  power.  The  contributions 
which  they  would  make  to  every  branch  of  science  and  letters 
would  soon  be  considerable.  The  teachers  of  the  country  in 
the  colleges  and  high  schools  would  attain  a  higher  general 
and  special  culture,  and  a  serious  hindrance  to  the  advance- 
ment of  both  would  be  set  aside.  As  things  now  are,  the 
newly  appointed  teacher  or  professor  too  often  enters  upon 
his  duties  with  insufficient  preparation,  and  must  spend  his 
first  years  of  study  in  trying  experiments  upon  his  pupils. 
The  provision  of  foundations  of  this  sort  is  of  especial  interest 
to  us  in  this  college,  from  its  relation  to  the  classes  and  schools 
for  graduates  which  have  been  organized  in  the  university. 
The  hope  is  cherished  that  the  suggestion  may  not  be  without 
important  results. 

It  is  equally  obvious  that  an  institution  which  aspires  in 
any  sense  to  be  a  seat  of  learning  must  possess  a  well-fur- 
nished and  a  well-endowed  library.  If  a  college  is  to  be  con- 
versant with  the  Past,  it  can  only  find  the  Past  in  a  collection 
of  books  which  record  its  achievements  and  in  the  men  who 
have  read  them.  If  the  colleges  of  the  country  are  to  be  the 
places  to  which  men  of*  learning  are  to  be  attracted  as  her 
chosen  seats,  then  they  should  possess  the  best  libraries  of  the 
country.  If  their  professors  are  to  be  stimulated  to  research, 
long  lines  of  books  should  inspire  their  ardor  or  frown  upon 
their  indolence  and  neglect  every  time  they  enter  the  stately 
halls  or  well-furnished  alcoves  of  the  library.  If  their  students 
are  to  be  impressed  with  the  range  of  human  achievement 
and  activity,  they  should  be  both  humbled  and  elevated  by  the 
silent  but  impressive  lessons  which  their  well-appointed  libra- 
ries  cannot  but   teach.      It  is  mortifying  in  this  connection 


36  ADDRESS. 

to  be  obliged  to  confess  how  insufficient  are  the  present  and 
future  resources  of  the  library  of  Yale  College.  In  some  de- 
partments it  is  rich,  for  which  it  owes  its  warmest  thanks  to 
princely  but  modest  benefactors  ;  in  a  few  it  is  respectably 
furnished  ;  in  many  more  it  is  sadly  deficient ;  and  in  all  for 
the  future  it  has  but  scanty  resources,  scarcely  sufficient  to 
keep  its  books  in  repair  and  to  supply  its  journals  ;  entirely 
inadequate  to  provide  for  its  other  expenses.  If  the  graduates 
are  in  future  to  justify  their  past  and  present  pride  in  their 
Alma  Mater,  or  to  be  gratified  in  their  expectations  concern- 
ing its  future,  they  will  not  fail  to  understand  that  a  well-fur- 
nished library  to  a  prosperous  college  or  a  growing  university 
is  a  necessity  of  life. 

If  there  be  any  friend  of  the  College  who  desires  to  serve  it 
efficiently  he  can  do  it  in  no  manner  more  honorable  to  him- 
self and  useful  to  the  public  than  by  endowing  the  library  so 
liberally  as  to  make  it  a  perpetual  memorial  of  his  name. 

A  school  of  higher  learning,  in  addition  to  ample  libraries, 
should  possess  all  the  other  appliances  which  represent  the 
past.  Its  museums  and  collections,  which  suggest  to  the 
mind  or  speak  to  the  eye  of  what  man  has  been  or  done, 
should  be  abundantly  furnished.  Especially  should  the  achieve- 
ments of  modern  science  and  art  be  brought  within  the  ob- 
servation of  teachers  and  pupils.  The  sciences  of  nature  and 
the  arts  which  relate  to  them  should  be  fully  illustrated  by  the 
specimens  and  appliances  which  research  and  invention  have 
collected  or  constructed.  The  remains  of  polished  centuries 
and  of  the  ages  that  are  yet  without  a  name  or  a  date,  should 
speak  to  the  imagination  and  instruct  the  reason  by  coins  and 
medals  and  monumental  tablets,  —  by  the  implements  of  war 
and  husbandry,  and  the  adornments  of  rude  or  polished  luxury. 
In  an  institution  of  higher  learning,  nothing  that  represents  the 
past  would  seem  to  be  amiss,  whether  it  reproduces  its  treas- 
ures or  its  wastes  ;  whether  it  recites  its  activities  that  have 
been  rewarded  by  success  or  disappointed  by  loss,  —  its  truths 
or  its  errors,  —  its  inventions  that  have  succeeded  or  its  fanta- 
sies that  have  failed. 


ADDRESS.  37 

From  the  relation  of  the  higher  education  to  the  past,  we 
pass  to  its  concern  with  the  present,  and  observe  that  this  edu- 
cation should  never  be  so  devoted  to  the  generations  which 
are  gone  as  to  forget  the  generation  which  is  now  thinking 
and  acting.  The  learning  which  it  acquires  it  does  not  ac- 
quire for  the  gratification  of  a  few  erudite  students,  or  the 
satisfaction  of  a  few  curious  critics,  but  for  the  service  of  the 
present  age.  While  a  college  cannot  teach  except  it  also 
learns  from  the  past,  it  cannot  teach  unless  it  understands  and 
sympathizes  with  the  generation  which  it  attempts  to  instruct. 
While  it  is  true  that  certain  truths  and  principles  are  the  same 
for  all  the  generations,  it  is  also  true  that  every  age  has  its 
own  methods  of  conceiving  and  applying  them,  its  own  diffi- 
culties in  accepting  what  is  true  and  in  refuting  what  is  false, 
its  own  forms  of  scientific  inquiry,  and  its  own  forms  of  lit- 
erary expression.  This  is  eminently  true  of  our  country  in 
these  our  times.  Its  intellectual  activity  is  unlike  that  of  any 
other  country  or  of  any  other  period.  From  the  phases  of 
scientific  and  of  popular  activity  with  which  the  whole  country 
is  moved  from  time  to  time,  the  higher  institutions  may  not 
estrange  themselves,  in  their  devotion  to  the  routine  of  aca- 
demic instruction  or  the  prosecution  of  learned  researches.  It 
is  not  impossible  now  and  then  that  they  should  fall  behind  the 
science  and  speculation,  the  philology  and  literature  of  their 
own  day,  through  their  exclusive  occupation  with  the  thinking 
and  literature  of  past  generations.  They  do  well  also  to  re- 
member that  though  learned,  they  have  no  monopoly  of  learn- 
ing ;  though  scientific,  they  do  not  necessarily  lead  or  even 
follow  the  science  of  their  time  ;  though  devoted  to  literary 
criticism  and  research,  there  is  a  busy  world  of  historians  and 
poets  and  essayists,  whose  energetic  activity  is  moving  for- 
ward or  backward,  upward  or  downward,  the  thought,  the 
diction,  and  the  principles  of  a  progressive  generation.  The 
private  student  and  the  amateur  scientist  and  philologist  have 
sometimes  leisure  and  resources  which  the  college  professor 
cannot  command.  Now  and  then,  from  some  quarter  unlooked 
for,  there  springs  up  a  genius  in  speculation  or  literature,  who 
sets  the  learned  world  in  a  maze  of  wonder  at  his  strength  and 


38  ADDRESS. 

his  audacity.  It  is  unfortunate  for  the  prestige  of  the  college 
and  the  cause  of  learning,  if  the  incumbent  of  any  of  its  de- 
partments falls  behind  the  knowledge  and  the  discussions  of 
the  times.  If  the  mathematician,  the  physicist,  the  philolo- 
gist, the  critic,  the  historian,  or  the  metaphysician  of  the  uni- 
versity is  not  master  of  the  acquisitions  and  the  discussions 
which  have  been  reached  in  his  own  sphere,  his  college  is 
weakened  and  dishonored.  It  not  only  suffers  in  reputation, 
but  it  must  fail  to  prepare  its  pupils  adequately  for  the  field  of 
thought  and  activity  into  which  they  are  to  be  ushered.  Un- 
less the  teacher  is  alive  to  the  thinking  of  the  present  he  can- 
not prepare  his  pupils  fully  to  meet  it,  —  to  accept  whatever  in 
it  is  true  and  good,  and  to  reject  whatever  is  erroneous  and 
evil.  Moreover,  if  he  is  ignorant  of  the  present,  his  pupils 
cannot  be,  even  while  they  sit  under  his  teachings.  They 
come  into  his  class-room  fresh  from  the  exuberant  life  of  a 
new  generation.  He  may  ignore  or  despise  it.  They  do  not. 
They  sympathize  with  its  knowledge  and  its  ignorance,  they 
share  in  its  wisdom  and  its  folly.  If  he  understands  and  cares 
for  neither,  he  is  so  far  unfitted  to  counsel  and  guide  them.  But 
if  they  are  made  aware  that  he  understands  the  great  world 
without  the  college  as  well  as  the  little  world  within,  they  will 
listen  to  his  instructions  with  respect.  These  remarks  have 
special  application  to  the  later  years  of  study  and  instruction, 
when  grammar  should  become  philology,  and  analysis  gives 
way  to  literary  criticism,  and  the  literature  of  the  past  is  com- 
pared with  the  literature  of  the  present,  and  the  sciences  of 
matter  and  of  spirit  awaken  to  thought,  and  history  and  polit- 
ical science  throw  light  upon  passing  events  and  controversies. 
Indeed,  of  all  the  later  studies  of  the  college  and  the  advanced 
studies  that  follow,  it  is  indispensable  that  the  teacher  should 
be  a  man  who  judges  the  present  by  the  past,  and  makes  the 
present  illustrate  the  past.  President  Woolsey  has  been  none 
the  less  efficient  as  an  instructor,  because  he  has  brought  his 
reading  and  his  thought  to  bear  upon  questions  of  social  morals 
and  international  complications. 

There  is  special  need  at  the  present  moment  that  the  stu- 
dent should  sympathize  with  the  present  generation,  because 


ADDRESS.  39 

he  is  sometimes  reproached  with  being  out  of  sympathy  with 
it,  and  because  the  present  so  pressingly  needs  all  the  energy 
and  skill  which  culture  and  learning  can  apply  to  elevate  and 
correct  it.  If  the  professors  of  our  higher  institutions  some- 
times cease  to  sympathize  with  present  movements,  it  is  never 
true  of  their  pupils.  For  this  very  reason  the  necessity  is  so 
much  the  more  imperative  that  their  teachers  should  also 
understand  these  movements,  —  that  they  may  prepare  their 
pupils  to  meet  them  ;  if  in  the  direction  of  the  truth  that  they 
should  welcome  them,  if  of  error  that  they  should  know  why 
they  withstand  them.  The  standing  reproach  against  university 
life,  that  it  tends  to  withdraw  its  pupils  from  the  thought  and 
activities  of  their  times,  is,  however,  refuted  by  the  history  of 
universities  in  every  generation, —  from  the  days  when  Luther 
reflected  in  his  own  struggling  heart  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
which  were  moving  the  men  of  his  time,  down  to  the  present 
moment  when  the  speculations  of  Mill  and  of  Buckle  have 
penetrated  into  the  common  rooms  of  Oxford,  and  agitated  the 
colleges  where  Wesley  and  Whitefield,  Pusey  and  Newman, 
Arnold  and  Whately  half  anticipated  and  half  created  the  rev- 
olutions of  popular  thought  and  feeling  with  which  their  names 
are  connected.  But  while  the  university  should  wisely  adapt 
itself  to  the  needs  and  changes  of  the  present,  it  should  never 
humor  its  caprices  nor  conform  itself  to  its  unreasonable  de- 
mands. It  should  in  some  sense  be  the  teacher  of  the  public 
as  well  as  of  its  own  pupils.  It  is  in  no  sense  the  servant  of 
public  opinion  when  public  opinion  is  superficial  or  erroneous, 
—  but  it  is  called  to  be  its  corrector  and  controller.  Es- 
pecially in  matters  of  education  should  it  neither  pander  to 
popular  prejudices  nor  take  advantage  of  popular  humors.  If 
there  is  any  sanctuary  where  well-grounded  convictions  should 
find  refuge,  and  where  these  should  be  honored,  it  is  in  a  place 
devoted  to  the  higher  education  ;  especially  if  these  convic- 
tions concern  the  very  function  for  which  its  members  are 
called  to  serve  at  its  altar.  We  would  not  recall  the  times 
when  the  most  weighty  questions  in  theology  and  law  were 
submitted  to  a  council  of  university  professors,  but  the  days 
will  be   degenerate  indeed  when   university  professors   have 


40  ADDJRESS. 

no  convictions,  or  fail  to  assert  them  concerning  the  higher 
education,  whether  they  do  or  do  not  suit  the  humor  of  the 
hour. 

The  higher  education  in  mastering  the  past  and  sympathiz- 
ing with  the  present,  will  wisely  forecast  and  direct  the  future. 
The  men  whom  it  trains  are  men  of  the  future,  and  to  a  large 
extent  have  the  future  of  the  country  in  their  hands.  Hence 
the  relations  of  this  education  to  the  future  take  up  into  them- 
selves and  control  its  relations  to  the  present  and  the  past. 
The  aims  and  duties  of  its  directors  are  briefly  comprehended 
in  the  positions  :  as  students,  they  should  add  to  the  science  of 
the  past ;  as  teachers  they  should  train  to  the  highest  intellectual 
capacity  and  achievement  as  well  to  the  noblest  impulses  and 
perfection. 

The  duty  of  adding  to  the  knowledge  of  one's  time  will 
scarcely  be  questioned.  It  needs  little  illustration  or  enforce- 
ment in  an  age  of  intellectual  enterprise  which  sees  little  that 
is  true  which  is  not  new,  and  of  moral  hardihood  which  has 
almost  forgotten  its  reverence  in  the  ardor  of  its  hopes.  The 
time  was  when  the  learned  classes  and  their  institutions  were 
content  to  repeat  traditional  lore,  —  when  logic,  philology,  and 
theology  were  the  exclusive  spheres  of  intellectual  activity  and 
the  sole  instruments  of  culture,  and  when  these  sciences  were 
taught  and  learned  in  a  mechanical  spirit.  In  those  times 
one  age  was  very  like  another,  and  the  education  of  one  gen- 
eration was  the  dull  and  traditionary  transcript  of  that  which 
went  before.  To  a  certain  extent  this  is  still  true  of  the  Eng- 
lish schools  and  colleges.  But  since  the  modern  comparative 
and  critical  spirit  has  breathed  life  into  philology  and  history ; 
since  philosophy,  ethics,  and  theology  have  been  searched  by 
solvents  of  a  potency  never  before  dreamed  of;  since  even 
logic  and  revelation  are  challenged  at  every  turn  concerning 
their  right  to  be  ;  —  since  the  new  sciences  of  nature  have 
astonished  the  world  by  their  achievements,  and  have  become 
romantic  almost  to  insanity  in  their  aspirations  ;  since  litera- 
ture itself  fills  the  popular  mind  with  the  most  daring  promises 
and  the  boldest  denials,  it  is  impossible  that  the  best  thought 
and  learning  should  not  be  occupied  with  the  future. 


ADDRESS.  41 

We  hardly  need  assert  that  no  teacher  at  the  present  day 
deserves  the  name  who  is  not  prepared  to  revise  his  opinions, 
and  if  need  be  to  change  them.  The  spirit  of  progress  and  of 
growth  animates  all  circles,  and  it  should  breathe  a  vigorous 
and  hopeful  life  into  every  university.  The  eye  of  every  in- 
structor should  look  hopefully  and  eagerly  forward,  to  greet 
every  new  discovery,  to  welcome  every  new  truth,  and  to  add 
to  past  contributions  by  new  experiments,  invention,  and 
thought.  In  all  these  investigations  by  which  the  higher  edu- 
cation would  add  to  scientific  truth,  whatever  may  be  the  sub- 
ject matter  which  they  concern,  and  whatever  may  be  the  con- 
sequences to  cherished  faiths  and  opinions,  its  spirit  should 
be  free.  But  the  freest  inquirer  is  the  most  remote  from  rash- 
ness and  conceit.  The  bravest  confidence  in  truth  is  com- 
monly measured  by  docility,  candor,  and  reverence. 

Leaving  this  point  we  pass  to  the  duty  of  training  to  the 
highest  intellectual  power  and  achievement.  Two  principles 
must  be  regarded  as  unquestioned :  The  higher  education 
should  aim  at  intellectual  culture  and  training  rather  than  at 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  and  it  should  respect  remote  rather 
than  immediate  results. 

The  highest  education  should  propose  intellectual  training  as 
its  chief  object.  That  education  is  conceived  in  the  wisest 
spirit  and  is  in  the  best  sense  the  most  liberal  which  values 
permanent  intellectual  power  and  culture  above  any  accumu- 
lation of  facts,  any  knowledge  of  words  or  phrases,  or  any  dex- 
terity in  action  or  in  speech.  No  one  will  deny  that  training 
is  reached  by  acquiring  knowledge,  but  knowledge  in  the  best 
sense  is  more  than  the  accumulation  of  facts,  whatever  these 
may  be,  whether  words,  events,  paradigms,  or  dates.  Facts 
as  such  do  not  constitute  knowledge,  but  only  facts  as  held  in 
a  method  and  as  related  to  principles  and  laws.  Facts  as  such 
do  not  even  enrich  the  mind,  but  only  those  facts  which  stim- 
ulate the  imagination,  which  elevate  the  feelings,  which  illus- 
trate principles,  and  regulate  the  life.  Moreover,  in  all  the 
stages  of  education  many  of  the  tasks  are  purely  preparative 
and  disciplinary.  The  most  earnest  stickler  for  knowledge 
made  easy  and  self-propelling,  must  confess  that  in  childhood 


42  ADDRESS. 

alphabets  and  paradigms  and  derivations  and  syntactical  rules 
must  be  painfully  learned  before  they  can  be  understood  and 
applied.  As  we  advance,  nomenclatures  and  classifications 
must  be  matured,  and  by  and  by  mathematical  distinctions 
must  be  discerned  and  made  familiar,  at  the  cost  sometimes 
of  reluctant  attention  ;  skill  and  accuracy  in  working  prob- 
lems and  reading  French  and  German,  even  if  we  let  alone 
Latin  and  Greek,  must  be  acquired  before  the  mind  is  able  or 
is  pleased  to  walk,  or  it  may  be  to  soar,  along  or  above  the 
heights  of  analysis  and  speculation.  The  truth  cannot  be  set 
aside  nor  denied,  that  in  the  elementary  stages  of  every  branch 
of  knowledge,  from  the  mastery  of  the  alphabet  upwards,  in- 
tellectual labor  must  be  enforced  largely  for  the  sake  of  its  re- 
mote results,  and  these  results  often  appear  only  as  enhanced 
skill  or  capacity. 

Studies  for  discipline,  so  obtrusive  in  the  lower  education, 
cannot  be  avoided  in  the  higher.  The  methods  and  appli- 
ances of  teaching  have  not  yet  been  so  far  perfected,  nor  have 
the  minds  of  our  pupils  been  so  far  quickened  or  elevated  by 
preliminary  training,  as  to  enable  us  to  dispense  with  many 
studies  which  are  especially  disciplinary,  and  in  a  degree  un- 
attractive. The  elements  of  every  science,  even  of  the  sciences 
of  nature,  the  grammar  of  every  new  language,  bring  with  them 
drudgery  and  work,  which  excite  no  high  intellectual,  emo- 
tional, or  practical  interest.  It  is  urged  that  inasmuch  as  all 
study  and  acquisition  must  be  disciplinary,  it  can  matter  little 
what  studies  are  pursued,  whether  the  modern  or  the  ancient 
languages,  whether  the  mathematics  or  natural  history,  whether 
physics  and  philosophy  or  experimental  research ;  and  there-, 
fore  each  student  should  select  what  he  fancies,  or  believes  he 
can  use.  We  cannot  accept  the  doctrine  that  all  studies  are 
equally  disciplinary  in  their  influence  and  effect,  or  that  a  selec- 
tion of  the  most  quickening  and  useful  cannot  be  made  by  teach- 
ers better  than  by  pupils.  In  such  selection  regard  should  be 
had  to  the  time  allowed  for  higher  culture,  as  well  as  to  the  ap- 
titudes and  tastes  and  future  employments  of  the  student. 

In  accordance  with  these  views,  we  have  opened  two  schools 
for  undergraduate  students,  the  one  of  which  is  prevailingly 


ADDRESS.  43 

scientific  and  looks  more  to  modern  and  active  life*  and  the 
other  is  especially  classical,  historical,  and  speculative.  Both 
are  provided  with  a  fixed  curriculum,  and  the  spirit  of  both  is 
disciplinary.  In  both  there  is  some  freedom  of  election,  in  the 
scientific  school  there  being  a -wider  and  freer  range,  and  some 
provision  for  occasional  students.  But  both  are  conceived  and 
conducted  after  substantially  the  same  theory,  that  severe  and 
enforced  attention  and  patient  labor  open  the  way  to  intellec- 
tual power  and  thorough  acquisition.  Over  the  gateway  of 
neither  is  written,  "  Turn  in  hither,  O  ye  simple  ones,  who 
believe  in  a  short  and  easy  road  to  mental  power."  Each 
of  these  schools  has  its  attractions  and  excitements.  The  one 
is  nearer  to  the  obtrusive  and  solid  world  of  matter  and  ex- 
periment, and  its  scientific  studies  look  almost  immediately  to 
application,  either  in  one's  profession,  which  is  two  or  three 
years  nearer  than  to  the  other  course,  or  by  tests  and  practice 
that  can  be  constantly  resorted  to.  Its  literature  and  culture 
are  almost  exclusively  modern,  though  efficiently  and  learnedly 
enforced.  The  academic  course  has  its  satisfactions  —  though 
some  are  long  deferred  —  in  the  widened  acquaintance  and 
sympathy  with  ancient  as  well  as  modern  life,  in  the  invigorat- 
ing yet  refining  subtleties  of  classical  studies  and  philology, 
in  the  awakening  power  of  thought  and  expression,  in  the  kind- 
ling and  growing  appreciation  of  literature,  in  the  inspiring 
converse  with  history,  and  in  the  study  of  the  laws,  the  duties, 
and  the  destinies  of  the  human  spirit. 

We  confess  that  a  long  course  of  disciplinary  study,  sternly 
enforced  and  with  much  of  routine  and  drudgery,  with  a  feeble 
apprehension  or  positive  doubt  of  its  usefulness,  and  a  slowly 
awakened  sense  of  intellectual  advantage,  is  often  wearisome 
to  the  student,  and  not  always  grateful  to  the  teacher.  For 
this  reason  it  is  greatly  desired  that  every  curriculum,  espe- 
cially the  classical  or  humanistic,  should  be  administered  with 
an  intellectual  spirit  so  overmastering  as  to  be  irresistible  by 
the  most  inert  and  torpid  ;  that  the  study  of  language  and  of 
literature  as  it  proceeds  should  be  constantly  more  and  more 
quickening  to  thought ;  that  as  the  pupil  wakens  into  habits 
of  inquiry  and  glows  with  curiosity,  every  lesson  shall  more 


44  ADDKESS. 

than  meet  his  wants,  and  kindle  new  ardor  for  the  next.  The 
great  mass  even  of  our  best  students  can  never  become  strongly- 
interested  in  the  minutiae  of  grammar  or  the  niceties  of  phi- 
lology ;  but  there  are  few  who  cannot  be  kindled  to  the  appre- 
ciation of  the  classical  writings,  as  literature.  The  discipline 
of  grammar  should  not  be  dispensed  with,  but  discipline  ceases 
to  be  useful  when  it  has  exhausted  its  power  to  interest.  We 
trust  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when  a  better  and  more  uniform 
preparation  in  the  classics,  and  the  mastery  of  the  elements  of 
French  and  German  before  entering  college,  shall  make  more 
feasible  the  more  intellectual  and  aesthetic  study  of  the  ancient 
and  modern  languages  and  literature  ;  when  a  manlier  faith  in 
the  work  of  the  college  shall  pervade  the  college  and  the  com- 
munity, and  a  spirit  of  self-culture  and  self-improvement  shall 
enforce  study  without  the  friction  or  the  complaint  of  marks 
and  conditions.  But  even  then  —  in  that  millennium  which  the 
prophets  of  the  new  dispensation  declare  to  have  already  come 
in  the  schools  which  they  have  reared  —  the  external  law  and 
examination  will  not  cease  to  be  required  ;  rather,  will  they  be 
hailed  and  responded  to  as  the  best  auxiliaries  and  incentives 
to  the  law  written  on  the  heart. 

To  relieve  the  college  system  of  the  difficulties  adverted  to, 
the  plan  of  elective  studies  has  been  proposed  —  not  of  elective 
courses  or  schools,  of  which  we  have  spoken  and  which  the 
college  provides,  —  but  the  choice  of  studies  from  time  to  time, 
to  be  directed  by  the  real  or  fancied  aptitudes  or  preferences 
of  the  pupil,  and  the  possible  relation  of  these  studies  to  his 
future  profession  or  career.  We  grant  for  this  plan  a  tempo- 
ra  y  satisfaction  to  the  more  earnest  students  and  the  more 
ardent  enthusiasm  which  attends  the  continued  prosecution  of 
a  favorite  study.  But  we  cannot  overlook  the  very  serious  evils 
to  which  it  is  exposed.  The  majority  of  undergraduate  stu- 
dents have  neither  the  maturity  nor  the  data  which  qualify 
them  to  judge  of  the  relative  value  of  studies  or  their  bear- 
ing on  their  future  employments.  The  few  who  have  a  definite 
career,  or  pronounced  tastes,  may  be  misled  by  their  feelings  to 
judge  in  the  direction  which  is  most  injurious  because  for  the 
present  it  is  more  pleasing.    The  plan  involves  the  certain  evil 


ADDRESS.  45 

of  breaking  into  the  common  life  of  the  class  and  the  college 
as  well  as  of  unprofitable  expenditure  and  insuperable  com- 
plexity. 

A  still  more  serious  objection  to  a  wide  range  of  elective 
studies  in  the  college  is  found  in  its  tendency  to  limit  the  cycle 
of  the  studies  acknowledged  to  be  liberal,  and  to  contract  the 
period  of  university  education.  We  urge  in  this  connection 
that  the  higher  education  of  this  country  ought  in  its  forecast 
of  the  future,  to  contemplate  a  longer  rather  than  a  shorter  period 
of  time  for  its  completion.  Its  guardians  should  see  that  no 
projects  for  shortening  this  period  should  be  introduced  under 
the  plausible  pretext  of  greater  liberality  in  respect  to  the 
methods  or  the  matter  of  study  and  instruction.  It  would  be 
most  unfortunate  should  the  impression  prevail  that  the  high- 
est general  or  liberal  education  this  country  should  aspire  after 
or  furnish,  must  be  given  in  the  so-called  college  as  distin- 
guished from  the  graduate  school,  and  no  arrangements  should 
be  made  for  the  completion  of  any  of  these  liberal  studies,  after 
taking  the  first  degree  —  most  unfortunate,  indeed,  if  the  rush 
and  pressure  of  practical  life  should  crowd  itself  behind  that 
degree,  and  high  culture  in  the  college  should  be  estimated  by 
extraordinary  proficiency  in  one  or  two  specialities  of  science, 
letters,  or  philosophy,  —  after  which  comes  the  practice  and  ap- 
plication of  what  has  been  learned.  The  more  urgent  is  this 
noisy  tumult  of  life  without,  and  the  stronger  its  pressure 
against  the  doors  of  the  college,  the  greater  need  is  there  that 
certain  studies  which  have  little  relation  to  this  life  should  be 
attended  to,  and  the  less  occasion  that  those  should  be  antici- 
pated which  will  absorb  all  the  energies  of  life.  We  prefer  the 
theory  of  liberal  culture  which  assumes  that  an  increasing 
rather  than  a  diminishing  number  of  our  choicest  youth  of 
leisure  will  continue  their  literary  and  scientific  studies,  and 
thus  be  able  to  dignify  and  adorn  their  life  by  habits  of 
systematic  research  and  of  earnest  literary  activity  —  that 
some  who  are  devoted  to  business  will  acquire  the  strength  to 
withstand  the  absorbing  cares  and  the  insatiable  greed  of 
money  getting  ;  that  here  and  there  a  professional  man  may 
be  saved  from  the  narrowness  which  the  exclusive  claims  of 


46  ADDRESS. 

his  calling  must  engender  if  science,  and  literature,  and  history 
are  not  actively  attended  to.  What  this  country  demands  is  a 
larger  number  of  educated  men  who  are  elevated  and  refined 
by  a  culture  which  is  truly  liberal ;  men  whose  convictions  are 
founded  in  manifold  reading  and  comprehensive  thought ;  men 
with  the  insight  which  comes  only  from  a  larger  converse  with 
history,  a  profound  meditation  on  the  problems  of  life  and  spec- 
ulation, and  a  catholic  taste  in  literature.  The  more  such  men 
mingle  in  the  concerns  of  life,  the  more  do  they  soften  our 
controversies  and  dignify  our  discussions,  refine  upon  our  vul- 
garities and  introduce  amenities  into  our  social  life.  They  are 
needed  in  our  politics  and  literature,  at  the  bar  and  in  the 
pulpit,  in  our  newspapers  and  journals.  We  have  plenty  of 
cheap  glitter,  of  tawdry  bedizenment  and  showy  accomplish- 
ments ;  plenty  of  sensational  declamation,  coarse  argument, 
and  facile  rhetoric  ;  much  moral  earnestness  which  needs 
tolerance  and  knowledge,  and  religious  fervor  which  runs  into 
dogmatism  and  rant.  We  need  a  higher  and  more  consum- 
mate culture,  in  some  of  the  men  at  least  whom  we  educate  for 
the  work  of  life,  and  for  this  reason  the  arrangements  for  uni- 
versity education  should  contemplate  a  prolonged  period  of 
study. 

Instead,  then,  of  providing  university  studies  for  undergrad- 
uate students,  we  desire  to  make  our  undergraduate  departments 
preparatory  for  university  classes  and  schools.  These  under- 
graduate departments  are  two  :  the  old  classical  college,  —  the 
Yale  College  which  is  known  as  the  germ  of  all  its  offshoots,  — 
and  the  Sheffield  School  with  its  modern  and  scientific  cur- 
riculum of  three  years.  Both  these  are  feeders  to  the  Univer- 
sity proper.  This  consists  of  the  professional  schools  for 
Theology,  Law,  and  Medicine,  and  what  answers  to  the  de- 
partment of  Philosophy  in  a  German  university,  making  the 
analogy  of  the  two  almost  complete.  The  Philosophical  Depart- 
ment, so  far  as  organized,  includes  the  classes  and  courses  of 
study  for  graduate  students  in  the  Scientific  School  (as  the 
Schools  of  Engineering  and  Chemistry),  a  school  of  Philology 
fully  organized,  a  school  of  Mathematics  and  Physics,  and  a  par- 
tially organized  school  in  which  History  and  English  literature, 


ADDRESS.  47 

and  Politics  are  taught,  which  it  is  hoped  may  be  organized  as 
a  School  of  the  Moral  and  Political  Sciences.  To  these  should 
be  added,  as  not  least  significant,  the  School  of  the  Fine  Arts. 
This  is  our  scheme  of  an  organized  university.  It  presup- 
poses undergraduate  instruction  and  discipline,  and  super- 
adds additional  study  and  reading  in  regular  classes,  under 
able  instructors.  It  is  no  more  than  just  to  say  that  these 
arrangements  have  been  responded  to  by  the  attendance  of  as 
many  students  as  our  most  sanguine  hopes  could  have  contem- 
plated. This  scheme  of  classes  looking  towards  a  university 
degree,  is  capable  of  indefinite  expansion  according  to  the 
demands  of  science  and  letters,  the  resources  of  the  uni- 
versity in  money  and  men,  and  the  appliances  of  books  and 
collections.  It  invites  to  the  founding  of  university  professor- 
ships, of  which  more  than  one  is  fully  endowed  and  most  ably 
filled,  the  incumbents  of  which  may  not  only  lend  honor  to 
the  institution  in  their  appropriate  spheres,  but  may  give  valu- 
able instruction  and  incitements  to  undergraduate  pupils. 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  culture  and  discipline  in  their 
relations  to  the  intellect.  But  the  intellect  is  not  the  whole  of 
man,  nor  do  his  intellectual  powers  or  acquisitions  alone  de- 
termine his  value  to  himself  and  the  community — much  less 
that  which  is  higher  than  his  value,  his  worth.  This  is  meas- 
ured by  his  character,  as  indicated  by  his  aspirations  and  his 
motives.  We  cannot  if  we  would  avoid  the  ethical  and  relig- 
ious aspects  of  the  higher  education. 

To  form  the  character  is  a  legitimate  end  of  education  of 
every  kind,  and  the  higher  its  rank  the  more  important  is  it 
that  its  moral  and  religious  results  should  be  the  best  con- 
ceivable. A  college  or  university,  a  majority  of  whose  pupils 
should  deny  duty  and  God  in  theory,  or  dishonor  both  by 
characters  that  were  atheistic  and  vicious  —  whose  private 
lives  should  be  profligate  and  selfish,  and  whose  public  moral- 
ity should  be  venal  and  false,  —  would  do  more  to  corrupt  the 
country,  not  only  its  morality  but  its  intellectual  tone,  than  a 
formidable  array  of  pulpits  and  newspapers  could  withstand. 
Could  the  vile  creatures  among  us  who  now  affront  the  day  by 


48  ADDRESS, 

the  factitious  glare  of  wealth  and  office,  by  any  possibility  as- 
sume the  charms  which  high  education  and  refined  culture 
might  impart,  they  would  become  in  very  deed  the  scourges 
of  God  to  the  community.  If  an  institution  of  learning,  with 
pupils  trained  to  such  characters,  could  continue  to  exist  with- 
out perishing  from  its  own  rottenness,  it  would  be  a  fountain 
of  corruption  and  death  in  the  social  structure.  Should  athe- 
ism be  taught  in  it  as  a  scientific  theory,  and  a  materialistic 
psychology  logically  compel  to  the  denial  of  conscience  ;  should 
all  domestic  ties  be  unloosed  by  a  scientific  demonstration, 
and  social  obligations  be  dissolved  at  the  word  of  some  demi- 
god of  genius,  the  devastation  would  be  none  the  less  real  and 
none  the  less  appalling  because  it  was  accomplished  by  the 
necessities  of  science  or  ordered  by  the  dicta  of  philosophy. 
The  wail  of  the  sufferers  would  be  none  the  less  heart-rending, 
because  the  requiem  of  the  world's  aspirations  and  hopes  was 
inspired  and  chanted  by  some  genius  in  whom  poetry  and 
music  were  said  to  be  incarnate.  The  present  aspects  of  so- 
ciety at  home  and  abroad,  in  the  small  and  the  large,  are  com- 
pelling thoughtful  men  to  ask,  whether  the  practical  relaxation 
of  the  bonds  of  duty,  especially  among  men  of  culture  and 
education,  is  not  the  result  of  a  more  or  less  distinctly  ac- 
knowledged theoretical  skepticism.  And  yet  under  this  prac- 
tical pressure  it  is  still  questioned  by  not  a  few  doctrinaires  in 
education,  whether  any  direct  and  positive  instruction  or  influ- 
ence in  ethics  or  religion  is  compatible  with  the  independence 
of  the  student  and  the  catholicity  of  science.  It  is,  of  course, 
conceded,  that  the  rules  and  influences  of  public  morality  and 
Christian  civilization  should  be  practically  recognized  and  en- 
forced, but  it  is  contended  that  neither  ethical  nor  Christian 
truth  should  be  set  forth  in  the  forms  of  science,  or  made  the 
matter  of  academical  instruction.  These  it  is  urged  should  be 
left  to  the  family  and  the  church,  and  with  the  operation  of 
either  the  college  or  the  university  should  not  concern  itself. 
We  hold  the  opposite  opinion.  In  giving  our  reasons  for  it 
we  premise  that  we  have  special  reference  to  students  in  the 
college  as  distinguished  from  students  in  the  university,  stu- 
dents in  a  condition  of  pupilage  and  living  in  a  closely-knit 


ADDRESS.  49 

society.  How  far  our  principles  apply  to  university  schools 
and  classes  can  be  readily  inferred.  For  convenience  we  sep- 
arate ethical  from  religious  truth. 

That  ethical  truths  and  ethical  relations  are  appropriate  sub- 
jects for  scientific  investigation  cannot  be  questioned.  They 
are  assumed  in  politics  and  law.  They  cannot  be  excluded 
from  the  sciences  of  natural  right  and  social  obligation.  They 
are  constantly  obtruding  themselves  in  those  discussions  which 
fill  so  large  a  space,  —  and  so  many  of  which  conduct  to  action, 
—  in  our  modern  thinking.  The  questions  of  reform  and  of 
progress  with  which  political  economy  and  sociology  are  con- 
cerned, all  involve  ethical  principles  either  true  or  false.  We 
contend  that  every  man  who  assumes  to  think  and  decide  for 
himself  should  have  well-grounded  convictions  upon  these  sub- 
jects, which  he  can  state  and  defend  with  scientific  clearness. 
Duty  is  the  one  art  which  every  man  has  occasion  to  practice, 
and  he  that  by  culture  is  trained  to  have  reasons  for  his  beliefs 
and  acts,  must  use  his  intellect  to  guide  him  here.  But  the 
scientific  and  literary  devotee  is  exposed  to  the  danger  of  over- 
looking these  truths  as  truths  of  science  in  the  more  obtrusive 
and  absorbing  claims  of  his  favorite  studies.  Receiving  them 
as  taught  by  common  sense  and  enforced  by  conscience,  and 
therefore  bestowing  upon  them  little  intellectual  activity,  he 
finds  and  requires  no  place  for  them  in  his  scheme  of  rational 
knowledge.  Exciting  little  of  that  curiosity  which  the  novel- 
ties of  science  and  letters  arouse,  they  elicit  few  earnest  ques- 
tionings, and  consequently  no  positive  and  well-grounded  re- 
sponses. Such  a  man  may  retain  his  practical  faith,  but  he 
gives  it  no  intellectual  respect  because  it  excites  little  intellec- 
tual activity.  Perhaps  he  surrenders  it  without  question,  at 
the  sudden  call  of  some  scientific  theory,  or  under  the  potent 
charm  of  some  favorite  author.  Scientific  theories  of  matter 
and  life  all  have  ethical  consequences  and  an  ethical  signifi- 
cance. The  laws  of  the  physical  universe  either  witness  to 
duty  and  immortality  or  they  fail  to  suggest  either,  according 
to  our  interpretation  of  them.  History,  literature,  and  criti- 
cism necessarily  involve  ethical  principles  and  relations.  Our 
philosophy  of  history,  our  estimates  of  literature,  our  canons 
4 


50  ADDRESS. 

of  criticism,  our  choices  of  favorite  authors,  involve  ethical 
faiths  and  sympathies,  and  these  must  react  with  subtle  and 
irresistible  energy  upon  the  intellectual  habits  and  the  intel- 
lectual tone.  Any  education  must  be  defective  and  narrow 
which  does  not  concern  itself  with  ethical  principles  and  their 
relations  to  science,  to  literature,  and  life. 

That  a  high  tone  of  practical  ethics  should  be  enforced  by  the 
college  discipline  and  the  college  life,  will  be  universally  al- 
lowed. First  of  all,  the  discipline  of  the  college  should  have 
moral  aims  and  a  moral  significance.  Any  regime  which  holds 
to  thorough  and  honest  intellectual  work,  which  is  ready  to 
expose  pretension  and  dissipate  shams,  trains  indirectly  but 
effectively  to  honest  dealing,  to  uprightness  before  God  and 
downrightness  before  man.  To  hold  the  student  to  minute 
fidelity  in  little  things  is  an  enforcement  of  one  of  the  most 
significant  maxims  of  the  Gospel.  A  discipline  that  is  indul- 
gent and  inconstant  and  fitful,  that  does  not  enforce  its  own 
rules,  nor  respect  its  own  aims,  not  only  is  unjust  to  the  intel- 
lectual training  of  its  pupils,  but  insensibly  lowers  the  tone  of 
their  characters  by  failing  to  train  them  to  self-control,  to  obe- 
dience, to  industry,  and  patient  application.  The  quiet  and 
mechanical  working  of  a  good  system  of  college  discipline  con- 
tains within  itself  the  most  effective  moral  influences.  In  its 
administration,  however,  the  spirit  should  never  be  sacrificed 
to  the  letter,  nor  its  moral  import  be  strangled  by  technical 
preciseness.  Whether  it  is  applied  to  the  scholarship  or  the 
character,  it  should  be  felt  to  be  kind  and  noble  and  elevating. 
It  should  be  strict  without  being  over  precise,  impartial  but  not 
ungenerous,  exacting  but  not  petty,  rigid  but  not  suspicious. 

The  most  efficient  of  all  moral  influences  in  a  college  are 
those  which  proceed  from  the  personal  characters  of  the  in- 
structors. In  the  close  contact  of  academic  life,  it  can  never 
be  hidden  from  the  student  what  are  their  aims  and  spirit, 
what  their  principles  and  aspirations,  what  their  views  of  that 
which  is  due  from  man  to  man,  and  of  what  a  man  should  pro- 
pose to  himself  to  become.  These  cannot  be  concealed  from 
the  quick  and  discerning  eyes  of  youth.  A  noble  character 
becomes  light  and  inspiration,  when  dignified  by  eminent  intel- 


ADDRESS.  51 

lectual  power  and  attainments.  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold  was  more 
to  his  pupils  as  a  man  than  he  was  as  an  instructor.  Indeed, 
his  teachings  were  able  and  efficient  in  part,  because  they 
glowed  with  the  faith  and  moral  energy  which  burned  in  his 
heart.  Our  honored  and  beloved  President  who  for  forty  years 
has  done  so  much  for  the  scholarship  of  Yale  College,  has 
done  most  of  all  for  it  by  the  impression  of  his  passionate  de- 
votion to  truth,  his  indignant  scorn  of  meanness,  and  his  sim- 
ple love  of  goodness. 

The  influence  of  the  students  over  one  another  may  not  be 
overlooked.  The  public  sentiment  which  pervades  the  college 
community  is  to  many  an  enigma  ;  to  others  it  is  an  offense. 
To  those  who  feel  it  and  are  formed  by  it,  it  is  an  earnest  and 
potent  reality.  In  respect  to  many  of  the  nobler  elements  and 
manifestations  of  character  it  is  high-toned  and  inexorable ; 
in  respect  to  many  practices  which  spring  from  the  inclina- 
tions of  youth  and  the  supposed  traditions  of  the  college,  it  is 
occasionally  perverse  and  persistent.  While  we  contend  that 
this  atmosphere  is  in  many  respects  a  breezy  tonic  for  good, 
and  can  confidently  compare  it  for  moral  healthfulness  with 
that  of  any  other  society  to  which  a  youth  is  likely  to  be  intro- 
duced, we  cannot  but  desire  that  in  some  particulars  it  might 
be  made  more  rational  and  elevated ;  that  the  traditionary 
antagonism  between  teachers  and  pupils  need  not  be  pushed 
to  such  silly  extremes  ;  that  class  affinities  need  not  be  abused 
to  brutal  indignities  ;  that  society  rivalries  might  never  be 
acrid  or  ungenerous.  Above  all  do  we  desire  that  the  old- 
fashioned  virtue  of  truth  should  be  honored  in  the  sturdy 
English  fashion,  and  that  a  lie  might  be  stigmatized  as  essen- 
tially mean  to  whomsoever  it  is  uttered.  We  would  not  desire 
that  social  ostracism  should  in  any  case  be  violently  applied, 
but  if  there  is  any  offense  which  we  would  desire  that  students 
should  never  tolerate,  it  is  untruth.  The  graduates  of  recent 
years  can  accomplish  much  in  these  regards.  As  they  gather 
around  the  old  hearth-stone  and  joyfully  rekindle  the  fires  of 
college  enjoyments,  let  them  see  to  it  that  the  old  soils  and 
stains  are  effaced  even  though  it  is  urged  in  their  defense  that 
they  are  time-honored.     The  public  opinion  of  the  community 


52  ADDRESS. 

demands,  more  imperatively  than  it  once  did,  that  college 
foibles,  if  excused  as  indiscretions,  should  at  least  not  be 
exalted  into  virtues. 

The  Religious  and  Christian  character  of  our  higher  education 
is  intimately  related  to  the  ethical.  If  science  and  literature 
involve  ethical  relations,  they  also  involve  those  which  are 
religious.  If  the  sentiments  and  obligations  of  the  conscience 
give  dignity  and  interest  to  both,  much  more  do  those  which 
connect  man  with  God  and  Immortality.  The  Christian  his- 
tory occupies  the  foremost  place  in  modern  progress  and  de- 
velopment, and  whether  it  is  credible  and  true  must  be  decided 
by  every  man  who  concerns  himself  with  history  at  all.  The 
Christian  faith  and  sentiments  and  morals  and  civilization, 
have  so  far  penetrated  and  leavened  the  principles  of  modern 
life  that  criticism  must  face  the  question  whether  the  Christ 
from  whom  these  have  proceeded  be  an  impostor,  a  myth,  a 
romance  ;  or  the  central  object  of  the  world's  faith  and  rever- 
ence, the  inspirer  of  its  best  and  purest  emotions,  the  founda- 
tion of  its  immortal  hopes.  In  respect  to  all  these  points,  the 
instructions  and  the  influence  of  every  institution  of  higher 
learning  must  be  Christian  or  anti-Christian,  as  the  impres- 
sion of  the  characters  and  teachings  of  its  instructors  is  posi- 
tive or  negative.  The  more  positive  this  impression  is  the 
better  will  it  be  for  the  education  which  the  institution  gives. 
The  more  Christian  a  college  or  university  is,  other  things 
being  equal,  the  more  perfect  and  harmonious  will  be  its  cul- 
ture, the  more  philosophical  and  free  its  science,  the  more 
exact  and  profound  its  erudition,  the  richer  and  more  varied 
its  literature.  We  should  be  treacherous  to  our  faith  did  we 
not  believe  this  and  act  accordingly.  We  rejoice  that  this  is 
still  the  judgment  of  so  many  who  influence  public  opinion. 
We  desire  more  instead  of  less  of  Christianity  in  this  univer- 
sity. We  do  not  mean  that  we  would  have  religious  take  the 
place  of  intellectual  activity,  for  this  would  tend  to  dishonor 
Christianity  itself  by  an  ignorant  and  narrow  perversion  of  its 
claims  to  supremacy.  We  do  not  desire  that  the  sectarian  or 
denominational  spirit  should  be  intensified.  With  this  the 
liberalizing  spirit  of  Christian  culture  has  the  least  sympathy. 


ADDRESS.  53 

The  more  truly  Christian  a  university  becomes,  the  less  secta- 
rian will  be  its  spirit  and  influence.  \But  we  desire  that  all 
science  should  be  more  distinctly  connected  with  that  thought 
and  goodness  which  are  everywhere  manifested  in  the  universe 
of  matter  and  of  spirit ;  that  the  scientific  poverty  of  the  athe- 
istic materialism  should  be  clearly  proved  to  the  understand- 
ing as  well  as  felt  to  be  repellent  to  the  heart ;  that  the  starve- 
ling character  of  the  fatalistic  theory  of  history  may  be  deci- 
sively set  forth,  and  the  ignoble  tendencies  of  a  godless  and 
frivolous  literature  may  be  amply  illustrated.  We  desire  that 
the  place  and  influence  of  Christ  and  Christianity  in  reform- 
ing the  domain  of  speculation  and  of  action,  of  letters  and  of 
life,  should  be  distinctly,  emphatically,  and  reverentially  recog- 
nized^ In  all  this  we  are  not  untrue  to  the  catholicity  and 
authority  of  science,  for  we  avow  ourselves  ready  to  reexamine 
every  question  of  faith  in  the  light  of  the  newest  researches 
and  the  freshest  speculation,  and,  if  need  be,  to  modify  our 
belief  by  the  issue.  But  we  have  no  such  distrust  concerning 
the  results  as  to  provide  in  any  of  our  arrangements  for  the 
necessity  of  gradually  or  suddenly  abandoning  a  positive  and 
historical  Christianity.  As  devoted  to  scientific  thought  we 
claim  to  be  as  free  as  the  most  untrammeled.  We  would  cast 
off  our  Christianity  as  a  filthy  garment  if  we  loved  it  better 
than  we  love  the  truth.  We  have  no  favors  for  our  faith  to 
ask  of  science,  and  no  patronage  to  solicit  from  erudition.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  have  no  fears  from  either.  As  students  in 
literature  we  would  cherish  the  most  catholic  tastes  and  sym- 
pathies :  nor  need  we  fear  to  do  so  when  from  Lucretius  to 
Goethe  there  comes  up  the  sad  and  unbroken  testimony,  that 
the  absence  of  faith  and  worship  weakens  and  withers  the 
most  gifted  genius.  In  the  light  of  our  past  history  and  what 
are  to  be  the  pressing  demands  of  this  country,  we  assert  the 
opinion  that  Yale  College  must  and  will  be  forever  maintained 
as  a  Christian  university.  Would  that  it  were  provided  with 
a  chapel  that  in  the  strength  and  beauty  of  its  architecture 
worthily  represented  the  place  which  Christianity  holds  in  the 
esteem  of  its  guardians  and  friends. 

We  hold  that  the  earnest  and  Christian  daily  worship  of  a  col- 


54  ADDXESS. 

lege  household  elevates  and  invigorates  the  community,  even 
though  to  some  extent  it  may  be  unconscious  of  this  influence. 
The  varied  discussion  and  enforcement  of  the  themes  of  Chris- 
tian truth  and  duty,  when  managed  with  simplicity  and  skill, 
cannot  but  educate  the  mind  to  the  widest  and  most  stimulat- 
ing thought,  as  well  as  refine  it  to  the  seriousness,  tenderness, 
and  pathos  which  are  the  appropriate  results  of  culture.  No 
man  can  doubt  this  who  observes  the  special  interest  which 
questions  on  these  themes  excite  among  educated  men  of  the 
noblest  type  of  thought  and  feeling.  No  man  who  reads  Ten- 
nyson's "  In  Memoriam "  with  sympathy  or  appreciation  can 
say  that  Christian  influences  are  inappropriate  in  education. 
If  praying  and  preaching  are  sometimes  only  forms,  they  sym- 
bolize stirring  and  moving  truths.  To  discourse  against  com- 
pulsory attendance  at  worship  for  pupils  who  are  required  to 
attend  at  the  recitations,  is  all  very  well  for  those  who  choose 
to  amuse  themselves  with  very  transparent  ineptitudes. 

I  may  not  overlook  the  essentially  beneficent  character  of  the 
higher  education.  Its  institutions  cannot  be  provided  on  the 
ordinary  principles  of  exchange,  nor  can  they  be  administered 
after  the  law  of  supply  and  demand.  They  represent  public 
interests  which  the  benevolent  and  far-seeing  must  provide 
for  or  they  will  not  be  provided  for  at  all.  The  young  men 
who  will  best  appreciate  their  advantages,  and  who  will  apply 
them  most  beneficently  to  public  uses,  are  often  those  who 
have  no  money  with  which  to  purchase  the  opportunity  to 
develop  their  powers  for  the  benefit  of  the  State  and  the 
Church.  The  community  suffers  more  than  the  individual 
when  a  single  worthy  aspirant  for  high  education  is  turned 
back  for  the  want  of  means  to  go  forward.  All  our  colleges 
are  beneficent  not  only  in  furnishing  their  education  to  the 
wealthy  at  less  than  half  its  cost,  but  in  furnishing  it  gratui- 
tously to  the  most  of  those  who  are  unable  to  buy  it.  Many  of 
them  go  further  than  this,  and  by  means  of  scholarships  and 
foundations  are  able  to  distribute  to  the  most  worthy  consider- 
able sums  in  addition  to  the  fees  for  instruction.  A  few  are 
made  the  almoners  of  private  benefactors  in  the  ways  of  secret 


ADDRESS.  55 

though  generous  helpfulness  to  those  who  are  known  to  be 
needy  and  worthy  according  to  the  double  claim  of  need  and 
worth.  To  know  of  cases  of  this  kind  which  we  are  unable 
to  relieve,  is  one  of  the  severest  trials  of  the  many  which,  as 
instructors,  we  are  called  to  endure.  In  this  college  we  have 
the  opportunity  of  distributing  wisely  and  well  many  thousands 
a  year  more  than  we  can  readily  command.  Not  a  few  of  our 
graduates  who  could  easily  help  us  by  permanent  benefactions 
or  annual  payments,  will  not  be  ashamed  in  their  princely  wealth 
to  remember  how  grateful  was  such  assistance  to  themselves 
in  the  days  of  their  struggling  youth.  Liberally  to  meet  these 
claims  would  strengthen  the  college,  by  securing  to  it  a  larger 
number  of  its  most  valuable  pupils,  and  by  stimulating  them 
to  more  earnest  scholarship,  and  would  also  furnish  the  com- 
munity with  the  most  important  elements  of  its  permanent 
welfare.  The  private  history  of  not  a  few  of  the  most  useful 
and  eminent  men  whom  this  college  has  educated,  would  reveal 
some  modest  benefactor  behind  the  scenes. 

Again,  the  higher  education  of  the  country  depends  upon  and 
sympathizes  with  the  lower.  The  colleges  and  universities 
presuppose  preparatory  schools  that  fit  men  for  their  curricu- 
lum. They  ought  not  to  be  asked  to  perform  the  functions  of 
such  schools  nor  be  obliged  to  supply  their  deficiencies.  One 
of  the  largest  States  of  the  Union,  which  counts  its  population 
by  millions,  has,  according  to  the  best  educational  reports, 
fewer  schools  where  the  Greek  can  be  taught  which  is  required 
for  admission  to  college,  than  it  has  colleges  and  universities. 
In  consequence  of  this  deficiency,  the  question  has  been  raised 
whether  the  elements  of  this  language  should  not  be  reserved 
for  the  colleges,  and  whether  even  in  the  classes  of  arts  and 
letters  it  would  not  be  expedient  to  omit  it  altogether.  In  our 
view  it  would  be  a  sad  token  for  the  culture  of  the  country  if 
the  plastic  and  many-voiced  Greek,  with  its  Homeric  pictures 
and  rhythm,  its  Platonic  flexibility  and  subtleness,  its  Demos- 
thenean  compactness  and  energy,  its  scientific  adaptations, 
its  resources  for  nomenclature,  and  its  Christian  associations, 
were  to  be  omitted  or  made  optional  in  the  classical  college, 
especially  in  times  when  the  appliances  for  its  more  rapid  ac- 


56  ADDRESS. 

quisition  and  intelligent  mastery  are  so  abundant,  and  when 
familiarity  with  Greek  is  acknowledged  to  be  so  essential  to 
the  highest  culture.  But  the  fact  alluded  to  is  significant,  as 
it  illustrates  the  close  dependence  of  the  higher  upon  the 
lower  schools.  It  is  also  true  that  the  college  is  affected  by 
the  general  civilization  of  the  community,  the  manners  and 
spirit  of  the  people,  and  their  practical  estimates  of  intelli- 
gence and  morality.  Upon  all  these  the  higher  education  re- 
acts most  powerfully,  as  it  elevates  the  aims,  enlarges  the 
conceptions,  and  refines  and  brightens  the  life  of  the  people. 
Especially  is  its  influence  direct  and  efficient  upon  teachers 
of  every  grade.  Many  of  these  it  trains  not  only  for  the  clas- 
sical seminaries,  but  for  the  numerous  public  schools  of  the 
larger  towns.  The  time  is  not  very  distant  when  courses  of 
study  should  be  arranged  and  classes  organized  in  connection 
with  this  university,  with  the  express  object  of  giving  special 
instruction  and  training  to  teachers.  It  should  never  fail  to 
sympathize  with  every  movement  to  advance  the  educational 
interests  of  the  whole  community. 

In  the  views  expressed  concerning  the  Higher  Education, 
you  will  have  recognized  an  exposition  of  the  theory  which 
directs  the  organization  and  administration  of  Yale  College  in 
all  its  departments.  You  will  see  first  of  all  that  we  have  a 
theory.  We  are  not  the  blind  followers  of  tradition  or  custom, 
but  have  a  definite  system  which  we  intelligently  hold.  It  is 
true  this  theory  has  in  some  sense  taken  form  under  the  shap- 
ing and  progressive  influence  of  the  times,  and  has  been  made 
for  us  rather  than  made  by  us.  But  it  is  none  the  less  rational 
and  principled,  because  it  has.  been  shaped  by  the  endeavor  to 
meet  these  wants  in  the  wisest  manner.  Theories  of  educa- 
tion that  are  ideal  or  revolutionary,  like  similar  theories  of 
government,  read  well  but  work  badly.  But  while  our  theory 
takes  wisdom  from  the  past,  it  watches  the  present  and  is 
hopeful  and  enterprising  for  the  future.  We  claim  for  it  the 
very  great  advantage  of  providing  for  the  most  liberal  expansion 
and  an  unlimited  growth ;  if  indeed  the  demands  of  the  times 
for  a  more  accomplished  education  shall  be  met  by  wakeful 
enterprise  on  the  part  of  its  managers,  and  a  loyal  and  liberal 
support  on  the  part  of  its  friends. 


ADDRESS.  57 

I  have  no  time  to  speak  in  particular  of  the  Academical 
Department  of  the  college,  neither  of  its  progress  nor  its  de- 
fects, neither  of  its  strength  nor  its  weakness.  I  will  only,  in 
passing,  notice  the  imperative  necessity  of  a  much  larger 
working  force  for  the  drill  and  training  of  the  earlier  years,  to 
insure  that  minute  personal  supervision  and  close  personal 
intercourse  which  might  then  be  most  profitably  applied. 
Were  this  want  supplied,  there  would  be  opportunity  for  a 
freer  activity  in  the  later  years,  on  the  part  of  students  and 
teachers,  and  consequently  for  the  development  of  greater  en- 
thusiasm for  the  college  work.  We  find  abundant  room  for 
the  awakening  of  such  enthusiasm  in  the  reading  of  the  clas- 
sical authors,  in  the  cultivation  of  English  literature  and  his- 
tory, in  the  investigation  of  Speculative  questions,  and  in  a 
more  philosophical,  imaginative,  and  practical  interest  in  the 
Sciences  of  Nature.  In  all  these  directions  there  is  call  and 
opportunity  for  the  utmost  activity  and  enterprise  on  the  part 
of  teachers  and  pupils. 

Of  each  of  the  other  departments  I  will  say  a  word.  I 
speak  first  of  the  Sheffield  Scientific  School,  which,  as  has  been 
explained,  includes  an  undergraduate  and  a  graduate  section. 
It  deserves  to  be  noticed  here  that  this  school  had  its  first  be- 
ginnings with  the  administration  of  President  Woolsey,  and  is 
now  a  quarter  of  a  century  old.  In  this  time  it  has  attained  a 
complete  organization,  and  stands  acknowledged  as  equal  to 
any  school  in  this,  —  I  had  almost  said  in  any  country.  Yale 
College  has  every  reason  to  be  congratulated  that  those  sci- 
ences of  nature  which,  with  kindred  studies,  now  rightly  ab- 
sorb the  enthusiasm  of  so  many  minds,  are  so  ably  repre- 
sented, and  so  ardently  prosecuted  in  this  school.  It  has 
reason  to  rejoice,  also,  that  so  much  prominence  is  given  in  it 
to  linguistic  studies,  and  that  the  theory  and  administration  of 
the  school  are  conceived  and  executed  in  a  thoroughly  intel- 
lectual spirit.  The  growth  and  prosperity  of  this  school  are 
owing  to  the  zeal  and  ability  of  its  professors,  which  have  been 
untiring  and  indomitable,  to  the  generous  patrcoage  of  the 
State  of  Connecticut,  to  the  sympathy  and  interest  of  an  in- 
creasing number  of  friends  and  patrons,  and,  most  of  all,  to 


58  ADDRESS. 

the  generous  and  repeated  benefactions  of  the  gentleman 
whose  name  it  bears,  —  a  gentleman  as  distinguished  for  his 
modesty  as  for  his  munificence.  Few  men  give  so  generously 
as  he  has  done,  few  so  wisely,  few  so  perseveringly,  and  very 
few  with  such  satisfactory  returns.  Few  men  who  have  lived, 
who  have  endowed  a  literary  institution,  have  seen  it  quietly 
but  rapidly  attain  to  such  prosperity  and  renown. 

In  this  connection  we  are  reminded  of  another  friend  of 
education  and  science,  of  whose  large  and  varied  liberality  we 
have  had  a  share,  in  the  Peabody  Museum  for  the  various 
scientific  and  archaeological  collections  which  we  already  pos- 
sess or  may  acquire.  That  this  museum  will  not  be  empty 
when  it  is  erected  we  are  confident,  as  long  as  its  active  cura- 
tor can  lead  his  forces  in  the  field,  and  gather  spoils  from  the 
plains  and  the  earth,  and  his  indefatigable  associate,  who  is 
as  modest  and  candid  as  he  is  learned  and  sagacious,  shall  dis- 
sect and  classify,  and  what  is  better,  soundly  interpret  the 
varied  kingdom  of  life. 

We  may  not  overlook  another  similar  foundation  for  astro- 
nomical observation  and  telluric  researches,  which  has  already 
been  provided,  and  is  to  be  made  productive,  by  our  generous 
fellow  citizen  in  the  Winchester  Observatory. 

The  Law  Department  of  this  college  suffers  greatly,  as  is 
well  known,  from  its  scanty  endowments ;  having  no  founda- 
tion for  a  single  professorship.  It  is  provided  with  able  and 
faithful  instructors,  but  they  are  occupied  with  the  duties  and 
excitements  of  the  most  exacting  of  professions.  The  law 
schools  of  this  country  were  formerly  individual  enterprises. 
They  can  be  so  no  longer,  when  the  chairs  of  so  many  are  lib- 
erally endowed  with  university  funds.  Such  a  school,  to  com- 
pete with  those  already  established,  must  receive  the  almost 
exclusive  attention  of  two  or  three  gifted  men,  who  even  then 
must  sacrifice  the  prospect  of  large  professional  emoluments. 
We  naturally  look  to  the  members  of  the  legal  profession  to 
extend  their  fostering  care  to  the  nurseries  of  its  strength  and 
honor.  There  was  never,  perhaps,  a  time  when  the  importance 
of  this  profession  was  more  generally  acknowledged,  and  when 
its  intimate  relations  to  the  stability  of  our  political,  commer- 


ADDRESS.  59 

rial,  and  social  life  were  more  sensitively  appreciated.  The 
Commonwealth  which  gave  Yale  College  its  charter,  the  Union 
which  once  so  signally  interposed  its  judicial  authority  to  de- 
fend the  independence  of  all  similar  charters,  have  abundant 
occasion  to  feel  their  indebtedness  to  the  legal  profession. 
We  naturally  look  to  the  Commonwealth  of  Connecticut  and 
to  the  members  of  the  legal  profession,  to  provide  for  the  best 
education  of  its  advocates  and  judges.  May  we  not  call  on 
both  to  see  to  it  that  in  some  way  or  other  two  or  three  chairs 
of  Legal  Science  shall  be  sufficiently  endowed  to  attract  able 
and  enthusiastic  professors  ?  The  State  of  Connecticut  might 
well  feel  some  solicitude,  lest  having  given  to  the  world  almost 
the  first  two  examples  of  successful  schools  of  the  Common 
Law,  its  high  preeminence  should  fade  out  of  memory. 

The  college  will  not  cease  to  deplore  the  want  of  these 
endowments.  The  continued  residence  as  law  students  of 
many  of  its  choicest  graduates  is  of  greater  importance  than 
is  usually  conceded,  for  the  example  to  the  undergraduate 
students  of  enthusiastic  study  which  they  furnish.  The  uni- 
versity loses  much  when  it  loses  a  score  or  two  of  each  grad- 
uating class  whom  it  might  retain,  just  at  the  time  when  their 
powers  are  matured,  their  promise  is  brilliant,  and  the  ardor 
of  their  youth  is  intensified  by  zeal  for  personal  improvement 
and  professional  success. 

Not  only  might  a  prosperous  law  school  give  strength  to 
the  university,  but  it  might  derive  strength  from  it.  The 
sciences  nearest  akin  to  the  Law,  —  Ethics,  Politics,  and  So- 
ciology, —  demand  and  repay  the  most  earnest  and  scientific 
study.  History,  which  lends  her  guiding  light  to  all,  is  pre- 
eminently the  lawyer's  especial  recreation  and  monitor.  Po- 
litical economy  furnishes  principles  for  the  commerce  and  the 
legislation  with  which  the  lawyer  has  so  much  to  do.  Could  a 
School  of  Law  avail  itself  of  the  wisdom  and  learning  in  all 
these  sciences  of  such  a  teacher  on  these  subjects  as  the  one 
who  has  stood  at  the  head  of  this  university,  and  at  the  head 
of  so  many  of  these  sciences,  it  would  have  no  slight  advan- 
tage. 

The  Medical  School  has  an  able  Faculty,  who  have  shown  no 


60  ADDRESS, 

little  boldness  and  enterprise  in  initiating  a  course  of  instruc- 
tion extending  through  the  year,  and  in  requiring  frequent  ex- 
aminations from  text-books.  It  is  furnished  with  all  the  appli- 
ances for  successful  instruction,  except  those  which  are  insep- 
arable from  a  large  population.  Were  its  chairs  even  partially 
endowed,  and  its  resources  enlarged,  it  could  command  more 
of  the  time  and  energy  of  its  professors.  As  the  city  and  its 
vicinity  increase  in  population,  and  its  hospital  and  clinical 
facilities  are  enlarged,  the  institution  will  gain  in  influence 
and  numbers.  The  city  itself  has  a  far  more  direct  interest  in 
this  school  than  its  citizens  recognize.  Its  sanitary  condition, 
its  duties  to  the  many  suffering  and  helpless,  both  strangers 
and  citizens,  who  require  medical  aid,  are  powerful  arguments 
for  a  generous  endowment  and  support  of  the  Medical  Col- 
lege, the  State  Hospital,  and  a  City  Dispensary.  The  State 
of  Connecticut  has  an  interest  in  the  first  if  not  in  the  second 
of  the  three. 

The  Theological  Seminary  has  its  special  relations  to  the 
churches  which  look  to  it  for  their  religious  teachers  and  pas- 
tors, and  its  general  relations  to  the  university.  The  first  have 
been  liberally  responded  to,  within  a  few  years,  as  they  have 
been  earnestly  prosecuted  by  its  enthusiastic  professors.  The 
zeal  of  its  professors  and  the  liberality  of  its  patrons  have 
made  the  institution  so  prosperous  as  to  make  necessary  an 
additional  appeal  for  aid.  The  new  building  is  already  over- 
filled, and  the  effort  must  be  made  at  once  to  provide  addi- 
tional lodgings  as  well  as  to  meet  other  pressing  wants  of  the 
school.  The  advantages  that  such  a  seminary  derives  from 
the  fostering  care  of  a  great  literary  institution  might  be  ex- 
tended to  schools  of  other  Christian  denominations.  As  it  is, 
this  school  is  open  to  students  for  the  ministry  from  all  quar- 
ters, and  makes  little  reference  to  their  special  doctrines  or 
ecclesiastical  preferences.  The  seminary  is  most  of  all  con- 
cerned to  expound  and  defend  the  Christian  Truths  that  are 
universally  received  by  Evangelical  Protestants. 

A  good  theological  seminary  may  contribute  to  the  scientific 
and  literary  prosperity  of  a  university.  It  detains  upon  the 
same  ground  and  in  the  continued  relations  of  academic  life 


ADDRESS.  6 1 

more  or  fewer  of  its  graduates,  and  attracts  those  from  other 
colleges,  —  among  them  invariably  some  specially  distin- 
guished for  scholarly  acquisitions  and  literary  tastes,  as  well  as 
for  high  moral  and  religious  worth.  Such  men  cannot  but 
quicken  their  juniors  to  higher  intellectual  and  spiritual  aims. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  overlooked  that  Theology  itself  may  gain 
somewhat  from  an  intimate  connection  with  a  scientific  and 
learned  society  of  educators.  It  may  learn  more  fully  that 
with  which  it  must  sooner  or  later  measure  itself,  namely,  the 
science  and  culture  of  the  present  phases  of  the  world's  think- 
ing, what  new  truths  Science  will  assert  and  defend,  what 
new  principles  and  prejudices  Literature  may  evolve.  If  the 
new  light  is  false  and  misleading,  Theology  will  sooner  awake 
to  its  allurements  and  its  dangers,  and  more  sedulously  arm 
itself  and  the  community  against  its  influence.  If  the  light  is 
pure  and  true,  Theology  may  avail  itself  of  its  illumination  to 
correct  its  old  prejudices  and  to  modify  its  old  defences.  The- 
ology, though  resting  on  divine  communications  and  trusting 
to  supernatural  guidance,  is  yet  more  or  less  a  human  science. 
As  such,  it  is  modified  by  the  progressive  thinking  of  the 
world,  and  it  can  be  none  the  worse  to  keep  abreast  of  this 
thinking,  either  to  learn  from  or  to  control  it.  For  this  reason 
it  may  be  taught  and  learned  more  advantageously  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  great  University  than  in  a  separate  school. 

The  School  of  Fine  Arts  owes  its  existence  more  than  any 
department  of  the  University  to  the  thought  and  liberality  of 
a  single  family  —  the  family  whose  name  it  will  forever  bear. 
Though  it  is  yet  in  its  infancy,  it  is  manned  with  professors  of 
whom  no  school  need  be  ashamed,  and  its  building  and  appli- 
ances for  instruction  are  satisfactory.  That  it  will  be  devel- 
oped by  a  healthy  growth,  should  not  be  doubted.  That  the 
influence  of  its  permanent  collections  and  its  annual  exhibi- 
tions will  be  elevating  upon  the  whole  academic  body,  and  will 
quietly  educate  its  members  to  better  views  of  every  branch 
of  art,  is  most  apparent.  It  already  furnishes  systematic  in- 
struction to  the  pupils  of  the  Scientific  School.  It  will  awaken 
the  capacity  and  direct  the  beginnings  of  now  and  then  a 
gifted  student,  and  lead  him  to  his  destined  artist  life.     It  will 


62  ADDRESS. 

furnish  lectures  on  the  history  and  the  principles  of  Art,  which 
will  impart  instruction  and  refreshment,  not  only  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  University,  but  to  the  citizens  of  New  Haven. 
Its  appliances  and  attractions  may  be  indefinitely  increased. 
It  needs  an  Historical  Gallery,  such  as  the  Jarves  Collection 
might  be  made  the  nucleus  of,  if  this  could  find  a  purchaser 
who  would  make  for  it  a  permanent  home  where  now  it  has  a 
temporary  lodgment.  Its  galleries  welcome  any  really  good 
pictures,  as  well  as  engravings,  photographs,  designs,  and  arti- 
cles of  virtu.  In  all  contributions  of  this  sort  the  citizens  of 
New  Haven  have  a  direct  interest,  for  they  have  access  to  its 
treasures  at  all  times,  and  their  youth  of  both  sexes  can  avail 
themselves  of  its  instructions.  The  citizens  of  Boston  and 
New  York  are  now  taking  active  measures  to  provide  each  of 
these  cities  with  an  Art  Museum.  New  Haven  may  be  said 
to  be  provided  already  with  an  admirable  building  for  such 
uses.  Is  it  too  much  to  expect  that  with  its  rapid  advances  in 
wealth,  and  in  the  taste  of  its  citizens,  it  will  regard  this  Mu- 
seum so  far  its  own  as  to  enrich  it  with  gifts  ? 

Here  let  me  say  that  Yale  College  owes  much  to  the  citi- 
zens of  New  Haven,  and  it  would  gratefully  recognize  its  ob- 
ligations. The  names  of  its  most  liberal  benefactors  are  fa- 
miliar to  all,  of  Salisbury,  Street,  Sheffield,  Hillhouse,  Far- 
nam,  Marett,  Winchester,  and  others.  They  will  always  shine 
conspicuously  upon  its  annals.  Yale  College  has  been  re- 
garded with  real  if  not  always  with  acknowledged  pride  as  an 
honor  to  the  city.  Though  its  officers,  from  the  nature  of  their 
employments,  must  be  more  or  less  withdrawn  from  those  re- 
lations which  connect  men  of  business  together,  they  are  not 
withdrawn  in  their  sympathy  from  anything  which  concerns 
the  honor  or  the  welfare  of  their  fellow  citizens.  Whatever 
service  the  college,  as  such,  can  render  for  their  instruction 
or  enjoyment,  it  is  ready  always  to  perform.  On  the  other 
hand,  whatever  gifts  are  made  to  any  of  the  departments  of 
Yale  College,  —  which  may  not  be  improperly  considered  as 
the  University  of  the  city, —  are  doubly  grateful  as  the  gifts 
of  neighbors  and  friends.  If  any  jealousies  may  have  hereto- 
fore existed  to  abate  from  the  natural  pride  which  New  Haven 


ADDRESS.  63 

should  take  in  its  college,  they  have  long  ago  begun  to  fade 
away  before  the  enlightened  and  liberal  feeling  of  the  times. 
The  college  certainly  desires  to  cherish  a  public-spirited  and 
liberal  interest  in  the  city  and  its  inhabitants,  and  to  receive 
from  it  warm-hearted  sympathy. 

I  cannot  take  leave  of  the  venerated  and  beloved  head  of 
the  college  without  making  public  the  testimony  of  which  he 
does  not  need  to  be  assured,  that  as  few  men  have  known 
him  more  intimately  than  myself  in  his  private  and  public  re- 
lations, few  honor  him  more  sincerely  as  a  man,  or  are  knit 
more  closely  to  him  as  a  friend.  The  inspirer  of  the  best  and 
noblest  aims  of  my  dawning  manhood,  the  friend  of  all  my 
active  life,  the  official  superior  yet  faithful  and  beloved  asso- 
ciate in  all  the  public  and  private  trials  and  joys  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century,  he  has  now  committed  to  my  hands  the  trust 
which  he  has  discharged  with  unabating  fidelity  and  with  un- 
exampled success.  I  rejoice  that  he  is  to  remain  by  my  side, 
and  in  the  university,  to  which  he  will  contribute  his  wise 
counsel,  his  large  experience,  and  his  cheering  sympathy. 

To  the  students  of  the  college  in  all  its  departments,  I  may 
say  that  were  I  not  assured  that  the  great  majority  of  these 
eight  hundred  men  were  animated  with  earnest  purposes  for 
self-improvement,  and  that  even  the  less  earnest  had  warm 
and  generous  hearts,  I  should  not  accept  the  office  which 
makes  me  so  conspicuously  their  counsellor  and  friend.  I 
have  already  explained  what  are  the  intellectual  and  moral 
relations  of  the  higher  education  to  which  this  institution  is 
devoted.  All  that  I  ask  of  you  is  that  you  shall  expect  me  to 
promote  these  aims,  and  shall  give  yourselves  to  their  fulfill- 
ment with  the  earnestness  and  perseverance  which  these  aims 
will  justify.  As  it  is  my  duty  so  it  will  be  my  pleasure  to  be 
all  and  to  do  all  for  you  as  a  community  and  as  individuals 
which  I  shall  be  able  to  accomplish.  May  we  all,  teachers 
and  pupils,  reassure  our  faith  in  the  best  education,  and  pa- 
tiently and  earnestly  accept  the  conditions  of  success. 

The  graduates  of  the  college  are  distributed  widely  over  the 
country.     They  are  not  gathered  in  a  single  capital,  but  form 


64  ADDRESS. 

honorable  companies  in  most  of  the  cities  of  the  country,  the 
old  and  the  new,  and  are  scattered  here  and  there,  alone,  and 
in  multitudes  of  separate  homes.  But  wherever  they  are, 
their  fresh  recollections  center  here,  and  their  hearts  respond 
to  the  name  of  their  Alma  Mater  as  do  those  of  the  graduates 
of  no  other  college.  They  are  very  largely  public-spirited  and 
enterprising  men,  often  foremost  in  the  communities  in  which 
they  live,  which  so  press  upon  them  the  claims  of  local  insti- 
tutions of  education,  religion,  and  philanthropy  as  to  leave 
them  little  thought  or  money  for  the  Yale  which  they  fondly 
persuade  themselves  must  have  many  benefactors  among  the 
thousands  of  its  graduates.  The  gatherings  of  the  graduates 
here  are  so  brief  and  hurried,  and  to  many  so  infrequent  from 
remote  residence,  that  there  is  little  opportunity  for  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  the  wants  of  the  college  or  an  active  sym- 
pathy with  its  interests.  The  impression  has  prevailed  that 
there  was  little  desire  on  the  part  of  its  guardians  and  instruc- 
tors to  call  forth  such  sympathies.  No  impression  could  be 
more  incorrect  than  this,  but  it  has  not  been  easy  to  set  it 
aside.  By  an  unexpected  and  generous  act  of  the  State  of 
Connecticut  it  has  become  possible  to  invite  the  graduates  by 
a  yearly  election  to  be  formally  represented  in  our  corpora- 
tion, and  at  the  next  commencement  six  may  be  elected  mem- 
bers of  this  body.  This  change  in  the  constitution  of  the 
board  of  trust  will  at  least  bring  the  graduates  into  more  inti- 
mate relations  with  the  institution,  and  give  them  the  oppor- 
tunity for  an  active  cooperation  in  every  movement  for  its 
welfare.  To  us  this  change  is  welcome,  and  to  me  it  is  a 
happy  circumstance  that  it  is  already  consummated,  and  that 
the  new  era  begins  at  this  juncture.  This  is  no  time  to  ex- 
plain at  length  the  necessities  of  the  college.  To  some  of 
them  I  have  alluded  in  passing.  The  plans  for  its  progress 
and  improvements  are  manifold.  These  could  not  now  be  un- 
folded. But  I  venture  to  assure  the  graduates  that  no  persons 
are  more  sensitive  to  many  of  the  defects  in  the  working  of 
our  system  than  are  the  members  of  the  several  Faculties,  and 
no  persons  would  be  more  prompt  to  remove  them  were  the 
means  at  their  command.     The  criticisms  upon  the  college 


ADDRESS.  65 

which  now  and  then  appear,  we  always  interpret  as  showing 
that  you  have  been  trained  to  free  discussion  and  aspire  after 
the  highest  perfection. 

It  gives  me  no  little  satisfaction  in  this  grave  moment  of 
my  life  to  know  that  I  am  no  stranger  to  any  of  the  recent 
graduates  of  the  college.  For  twenty-five  years  I  have  been 
associated  with  your  and  my  loved  and  honored  president  in 
the  most  pleasant  relations  to  more  than  twenty-five  hundred 
of  our  pupils,  very  many  of  whom  we  remember  as  individuals 
with  great  satisfaction,  and  all  of  whom,  with  very  few  excep- 
tions, give  the  best  evidence  that  whatever  they  may  think  of 
the  training  of  the  college,  this  training  has  done  very  much 
that  is  good  for  their  culture  and  their  principles.  Of  one 
thing  I  believe  you  are  all  convinced ;  that  I  have  no  such 
desire  for  the  prominence  or  the  responsibilities  of  this  new 
office  as  would  lead  me  to  accept  it  were  I  not  constrained  by 
the  friendly  judgment  and  the  cordial  feeling  of  very  many  of 
that  Fraternity  of  living  men  who  constitute  what  we  call 
Yale  College,  and  which  is  made  up  of  its  Fellows,  its  Offi- 
cers, and  its  Graduates.  It  is  an  honor  which  I  gratefully 
acknowledge,  to  be  called  to  a  post  which  brings  me  into  such 
relations  to  this  most  honorable  fraternity.  It  will  be  a  great 
privilege  and  blessing,  if  my  life  is  spared,  not  to  disappoint 
any  reasonable  expectations  which  may  be  formed  of  the 
future.  On  my  colleagues  I  can  entirely  rely  for  aid  and  sym- 
pathy and  charitable  judgments.  If  we  may  continue  to  rely 
upon  the  loyalty  and  zeal  of  this  large  brotherhood,  we  do 
not  doubt  that,  with  the  blessing  of  the  God  in  whom  we  trust 
and  the  Christ  in  whom  we  hope,  Yale  College,  as  a  college 
and  as  a  university,  will  continue  to  be  eminently  prosperous, 
honored,  and  useful. 


SMPORTANT   WORKS 

BY 

PEES.  NOAH  PORTER,  D.  D„  LL.  D„ 

President  of  Yale  College. 

THE  HUMAN  INTELLECT: 

With   an   Introduction    upon    Psychology   and 

the   Human  Soul,     i  volume  8vo,  nearly  700 

pages.     $5. 

The  typographical  arrangement  of  the  volume 
— the  more  important  principles  of  facts  being  in 
larger  print  —  adapts  it  for  use  as  a  text-book, 
while  its  fullness  of  statement  makes  it  invaluable 
to  all  interested  in  Mental  Science. 

"  It  is  by  far  the  most  complete  treatise  of  the 
kind  in  the  English  language,  and  is  probably 
the  most  interesting  and  intelligible  in  any  lan- 
guage."—  N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

"  An  able  and  learned  work,  creditable  to  the 
author,  to  the  institution  with  which  he  is  con- 
nected, and  to  the  country  of  which  he  is  a 
citizen. "  —  Presbyterian  Banner  ( Pittsburg). 

"  Will  be  eagerly  welcomed  by  the  lovers  of  a 
sound  philosophy,  and  will  not  fail  to  be  read  by 
many  who  will  respect  its  clearness,  self-consis- 
tence, and  logical  acumen,  even  though  they  re- 
luct from  some  of  its  conclusions."  —  Congrega- 
tionalist. 

WHA  T  BOOKS  SHALL  I  READ  ? 
AND    HOW    SHALL    I    READ    THEM? 

One  volume,  crown  8vo.     Price,  $2. 

"  It  is  distinguished  by  all  the  rare  acumen, 
discriminating  taste,  and  extensive  literary  knowl- 
edge of  the  author.  The  chief  departments  of 
literature  are  reviewed  in  detail,  and  a  variety  of 
very  suggestive  and  useful  comments  are  made  in 
regard  to  the  representative  volumes  under  each 
head." — New  York  Times. 

"  One  of  the  ablest  and  most  sensible  and  in- 
structive volumes  which  a  lover  of  books  can 
read." — New  York  Observer. 

"  The  work  cannot  be  too  highly  commended 
to  young  men  who  wish  to  make  the  wisest  and 
most  profitable  employment  of  their  time."  — 
Christian  Intelligencer. 

ELEMENTS  OF  INTELLECT- 
UAL PHILOSOPHY. 
A  MANUAL  FOR  SCHOOLS  AND  COL- 
LEGES.    Abridged  from  "  The  Human  In- 
tellect."     1   volume,   crown  8vo,   nearly  600 
pages,  cloth.     Price,  $3. 

President  Porter's  great  work  upon  the  human 
intellect  at  once  secured  for  him  a  foremost  place 
among  living  metaphysicians.  The  demand  for 
this  work— even  in  its  expensive  form  —  as  a 
text-book,  has  induced  the  preparation  of  this 
abridged  and  cheaper  edition,  which  contains  all 
the  matter  of  the  larger  work  necessary  for  use 
in  the  class-room. 

"This  abridgment  is  very  well  done,  the  state- 
ments being  terse  and  perspicuous. "  —  New  York 
World. 

"  Presents  the  leading  facts  of  intellectual  sci- 
ence, from  the  author's  point  of  view,  with  clear- 
ness and  vigor. "  —  New  York  Tribune. 

The  above  books  sent  by  mail  to  any  address, 
postpaid,  upon  receipt  of  the  price,  by  the  pub- 
lishers, 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER  &  CO. 

654  Broadway,  New  York. 


IMPORTANT  WORKS 

BY 

THEODORE  D.  WOOLSET,  D.  B.,  LL.  D., 

Ex-President  of  Yale  College. 


INTERNATIONAL  LAW. 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  STUDY  OF" 
INTERNATIONAL  LAW.  Designed  as 
an  Aid  in  Teaching  and  in  Historical  Studies. 
This  edition  revised  and  enlarged.  Cloth, 
$2.50. 

"  Though  elementary  in  its  character,  it  is  still 
thorough  and  comprehensive,  and  presents  a  com- 
plete outline  of  that  grand  system  of  ethical  juris- 
prudence which  holds,  as  it  were,  in  one  commu- 
nity the  nations  of  Christendom." — New  York 
Examiner. 

"  He  has  admirably  succeeded.  The  want  was 
that  of  a  compendium  treatise,  intended,  not  for 
lawyers  nor  for  those  having  the  profession  of  law 
in  view,  but  for  young  men  who  are  cultivating 
themselves  by  the  study  of  historical  and  politi- 
cal science."  —  St.  Louis  Republican. 

"The  editor  and  politician  will  find  it  a  con- 
venient companion.  Its  appendix  contains  a  most 
useful  list  of  the  principal  treaties  since  the  Ref- 
ormation." —  New  York  Evening  Post. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PRES- 
ENT AND  FUTURE. 

One  volume,  crown  8vo,  cloth,  $2.00. 

The  thousands  of  graduates  of  Yale  College, 
as  well  as  the  very  large  number  who  are  only  in 
a  general  way  familiar  with  the  deserved  reputa- 
tion of  President  Woolsey,  will  welcome  this  vol- 
ume, which  is  a  selection  from  the  discourses 
which  President  Woolsey  has  delivered  in  Yale 
College  Chapel  during  the  last  twenty-five  years. 
For  the  direct  application  of  truth,  severe  logical 
simplicity,  that  eloquence  which  springs  from  un- 
affected earnestness  and  single-hearted  sincerity 
of  desire  to  convince  the  understanding,  and  per- 
suade the  hearts  of  those  to  whom  they  were  ad- 
dressed, these  sermons  are  preeminent. 

"  They  are  the  kind  of  sermons  which  live  in 
the  thoughts  and  memories  of  men  long  after  they 
have  been  spoken.  They  are  worthy  of  being 
published,  and  then  of  being  carefully  read."  — 
Philadelphia  Presbyterian. 

''The  sermons  are  sound,  able,  and  forcible  in 
their  applications  of  the  truth.  The  head  and 
the  heart  will  alike  be  benefited  by  the  perusal 
of  them. ' '  —  Christian  Intelligencer. 


ESS  A  YS  ON  DIVORCE  AND  DI- 
VORCE LEGISLATION. 

WITH  SPECIAL  REFERENCE  TO  THE 
UNITED  STATES.  One  volume,  i2mo. 
Price,  $1.75. 

The  Essays  here  brought  together  originally 
appeared  in  The  New  Englander,  where  they 
attracted  wide  attention  from  the  exactness  and 
thoroughness  with  which  they  discuss  the  legal 
aspects  of  this  great  question,  as  well  as  from  the 
sound  discrimination  displayed  in  the  examina- 
tion of  its  social  aspects. 

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THE  BIBLE  COMMENTARY 

(POPULARLY  KNOWN  IN  ENGLAND  AS  "THE  SPEAKER'S  COMMENTARY.") 

A  Plain  Explanatory  Exposition  of  the  Holy 
Scriptures  for  every  Bible  Reader. 

To  be  published  at  regular  intervals,  in  royal  octavo  volumes,  at  the  uniform  price  of 
$5. 00  per  volume. 

WITH   OCCASIONAL   ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The  BIBLE  COMMENTARY,  the  publication  of  which  has  just  been  commenced,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER  &  CO.,  simultaneously  with  its  appearance  m  England,  had  its 
origin  in  the  widely  felt  want  of  a  plain  explanatory  Commentary  on  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
which  should  be  at  once  more  comprehensive  and  compact  than  any  now  published.  Pro- 
jected in  1863,  the  selection  of  the  scholars  to  be  employed  upon  it  was  entrusted  to  a  Com- 
mittee named  by  the  Speaker  of  the  British  House  of  Commons  and  the  Archbishop  of  York, 
and  through  the  agency  of  this  Committee  there  has  been  concentrated  upon  this  great 
work  a  combination  of  force  such  as  has  not  been  enlisted  in  any  similar  undertaking,  in 
England,  since  the  translation  of  King  James's  version  of  the  Bible.  Of  the  THIRTY-SIX 
DIFFERENT  DIVINES  who  are  engaged  upon  the  work,  nearly  all  are  widely  known  hi 
this  country  as  well  as  in  England,  for  their  valuable  and  extensive  contributions  to  the 
Literature  of  the  Bible,  and  in  this  Commentary  they  condense  then:  varied  learning  and 
their  most  matured  judgments. 

The  great  object  of  the  BIBLE  COMMENTARY  is  to  put  every  general  reader  and  stn 
dent  in  full  possession  of  whatever  information  may  be  necessary  to  enable  him  to  understand 
the  Holy  Scriptures ;  to  give  him,  as  far  as  possible,  the  same  advantages  as  the  Scholar,  and 
to  supply  him  with  satisfactory  answers  to  obj  ections  resting  upon  misrepresentations  or 
misinterpretations  of  the  text.  To  secure  this  end  most  effectually,  the  Comment  is  chiefly 
explanatory,  presenting  in  a  concise  and  readable  form  the  results  of  learned  investigations 
carried  on  during  the  last  half  century.  When  fuller  discussions  of  difficult  passages  or  im 
portant  subjects  are  necessary,  they  are  placed  at  the  end  of  the  chapter  or  volume. 

The  text  is  reprinted  without  alteration,  from  the  Authorized  Version  of  1611,  with  marginal 
references  and  renderings;  but  the  notes  forming  this  Commentary  will  embody  amended 
translations  of  passages  proved  to  be  incorrect  in  that  version. 

The  work  will  be  divided  into  EIGHT  SECTIONS,  which  it  is  expected  will  be  comprised 
in  as  many  volumes,  and  each  volume  will  be  a  royal  octavo.  Typographically,  special  pains 
has  been  taken  to  adapt  the  work  to  the  use  of  older  readers  and  students. 

N.B.— The  American  edition  of  the  Bible  Commentary  is  printed  from  stereotype  plates, 
duplicated  from  those  upon  which  the  English  edition  is  printed,  and  it  is  fully  equal  to 
that  in  every  respect. 

THE  FIRST  VOLUME  OP 

THE  BIBLE  COMMENTARY 

Is  now  ready.    It  contains : 

THE    PENTATEUCH. 

The  books  of  which  are  divided  as  follows,  among  the  contributors  named  : 

GENESIS  i  •R,t"  •ReV-  •E<  HAEOLr>  Beowne,  Bishop  of  Ely,  and 

|      author  of  Exposition  of  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles. 

EXODUS Chap.  I-XIX.     The  Editor. 

LEVITICUS Rev.  Samuel  Clakk,  M.A. 

"         " Chap.  XX.  to  the  End,  and 

NUMBERS    AND    DEUTER-  J  Rev.  T.  E.  Espin,  B.D.,  Warden  of  Queen's  Col- 
ONOM Y {      lege,  Birmingham. 

Making  one  vol.  royal  8vo,  of  nearly  1,000  pages,  being  the  only  complete  Commentary 
upon  the  Pentateuch,  in  one  volume,  in  the  English  language.  Price  in  cloth  $5.00,  lees 
than  one-half  that  of  the  English  edition. 

Full  prospectuses,  with  division  of  sections  and  names  of  contributors,  tsent  to  any 
address  on  application.     Single  copies  sent  post-paid,  on  receipt  of  price,  by 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER  &  CO.,  654  Broadway,  N.  Y. 


IO 

THE 


©Iplogkal  an&  f  ffao|ilJ!f  el  Hirarg, 

A  Series  of  Text-Books,  Original  and  Translated,  for  Colleges  and 
Theological  Seminaries. 

EDITED   BY 

HENRY    B.    SMITH,    D.  D.,    and    PHILIP    SCHAFF,    D.  D., 

PROFESSORS  IN  THE  UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,  NEW  YORK. 


Messrs.  Charles  Scribner  &  Co.  propose  to  publish  a  select  and  compact  Library  of  Text- 
Books  upon  all  the  main  departments  of  Theology  and  Philosophy,  adapted  to  the  wants 
especially  of  ministers  and  students  in  all  denominations. 

Some  of  the  works  will  be  translated  from  the  German  and  other  languages  ;  others  will 
be  based  upon  treatises  by  various  authors ;  some  will  be  written  for  the  library  by  English 
or  American  scholars.  The  aim  will  be  to  furnish  at  least  one  condensed  standard  work  on 
each  of  the  scientific  divisions  of  Theology  and  Philosophy,  giving  the  results  of  the  best 
critical  investigations,  excluding,  however,  such  histories  and  commentaries  as  extend 
through  many  volumes. 

The  Initial  Volume  of  this  Series  is  Now  Ready,  viz. : 

A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY, 

FROM  THALES  TO  THE  PRESENT  TIME. 
By  Dr.  F.  Ueberweg,  late  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Kbnigsberg. 

Translated  by  George   S.   Morris,  Professor  of  Modern  Languages  in  the  University 

of  Michigan.     Edited,  with  additions,  by  Noah  Porter,  LL.D.   President  of 

Yale  College,  with  an  Introduction  by  the  Editors  of  the  Library. 

Price  in  cloth  per  vol.,  $3. 50. 

Prof.  Ueberweg's  great  work  stands  without  a  rival.     The  American  translation  has 

been  made  with  the  author's  sanction,  and  has  the  advantages  of  numerous  additions  from 

his  pen. 

LANGE'S  COMMENTARY. 

ANOTHER  OLD  TESTAMENT  VOLUME. 

JOSHUA,    Translated    and    Edited    by   Rev.   Geo.    Bliss,    D.D.,    Lewisburg,   Pa. 
JUDGES  and  RUTH,  by  Rev.  P.  H.  Steenstra,  Cambridge. 

The  Volumes  previously  published  are  : 
OLD    TESTAMENT.— I.   GENESIS.      II.  PROVERBS,    SONG   OF    SOLO- 
MON, ECCLESIASTES.     III.  JEREMIAH  and  LAMENTATION. 
NEW  TESTAMENT.— I.  MATTHEW.     II.  MARK  and  LUKE.     III.  JOHN. 
IV.  ACTS.    V.  THE  EPISTLE  OF  PAUL  TO  THE  ROMANS.    VI.  COR- 
INTHIANS.    VII.  THESSALONIANS,  TIMOTHY,  TITUS,  PHILEMON, 
and    HEBREWS.      VIII.    GALATIANS,    EPHESIANS,    PHILIPPIANS, 
COLOSSIANS.     IX.  THE  EPISTLES   GENERAL  OF  JAMES,   PETER, 
JOHN,  and  JUDE. 
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EDINBURGH  REVIEW.  —  «  The  BEST  History  of  the  Roman  Republic." 
LONDON  TIMES. -"BY  FAR  THE  BEST  History  of  the  Decline  and  PaH 
of  the  Roman  Commonwealth." 


3XTO-W       READY,       VOLUME       IV. 

OF  THE 

jgtetotg  of  Momty 

FROM  THE  EARLIEST  TIME  TO  THE  PERIOD  OF  ITS  DECLINE. 

By  Dr.  THEODOR  MOMMSEJT. 

Translated,  with  the  author's  sanction  and  additions,  by  the  Rev.  W.  P.  Dickson,  Regius 
Professor  of  Biblical  Criticism  in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  late  Classical  Examiner  in 
the  University  of  St.  Andrews.  With  an  Introduction  by  Dr.  Leonhard  Schmitz,  and 
a  copious  Index  of  the  whole  four  volumes,  prepared  especially  for  this  edition. 

REPRINTED  FROM  THE  REVISED  LONDON  EDITION 

Four  Volumes  crown  8vo.  Price  per  volume,  $2.00. 


Dr.  Mommsen  has  long  been  known  and  appreciated  through  his  i^searches 
into  the  languages,  laws,  and  institutions  of  Ancient  Rome  and  Italy,  as 
the  most  thoroughly  versed  scholar  now  living  in  these  departments  of  his- 
torical investigation.  To  a  wonderfully  exact  and  exhaustive  knowledge  of 
these  subjects,  he  unites  great  powers  of  generalization,  a  vigorous,  spirited, 
and  exceedingly  graphic  style  and  keen  analytical  powers,  which  give  this 
history  a  degree  of  interest  and  a  permanent  value  possessed  by  no  other 
record  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman  Commonwealth.  "  Dr. 
Mommsen's  work,"  as  Dr.  Schmitz  remarks  in  the  introduction,  "  though 
the  production  of  a  man  of  most  profound  and  extensive  learning  and 
knowledge  of  the  world,  is  not  as  much  designed  for  the  professional 
scholar  as  for  intelligent  readers  of  all  classes  who  take  an  interest  in  the  his- 
tory of  by-gone  ages,  and  are  inclined  there  to  seek  information  that  may 
guide  them  safely  through  the  perplexing  mazes  of  modern  history." 

CRITICAL  NOTICES. 

"  A.  work  of  the  very  highest  merit ;  its  learning  is  exact  and  profound  ;  its  narrative  full 
of  genius  and  skill ;  its  descriptions  of  men  are  admirably  vivid.  We  wish  to  place  on 
record  our  opinion  that  Dr.  Mommsen's  is  by  far  the  best  history  of  the  Decline  and  FaD 
of  the  Roman  Commonwealth." — London  Times. 

*'  Since  the  days  of  Niebuhr,  no  work  on  Roman  History  has  appeared  that  combines  so 
much  to  attract,  instruct,  and  charm  the  reader.  Its  style — a  rare  quality  in  a  German  au- 
thor— is  vigorous,  spirited,  and  animated.  Professor  Mommsen's  work  can  stand  a  com- 
parison with  the  noblest  productions  of  modern  history." — Dr.  Schmitz. 

"  This  is  the  best  history  of  the  Roman  Republic,  taking  the  work  on  the  whole — the 
author's  complete  mastery  of  his  subject,  the  variety  of  his  gifts  and  acquirements,  his 
graphic  power  in  the  delineation  of  national  and  individual  character,  and  the  vivid  interest 
which  he  inspires  in  every  portion  of  his  book.  He  is  without  an  equal  in  his  own  sphere." 
— Edinburgh  Review. 

"'  A  book  of  deepest  interest"— Dean  Trench. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 


3  0112  111513088 


